TEN 



SERMONS 



OF RELIGION, 



BY 

THEODORE PARKER, 

5HNISTER OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, IN BOSTON. 




BOSTON: 

RUFUS LEIGHTON, J 
1859. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 
THEODORE PARKER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE; 
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS. 



TO 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 

WITH ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS, 
AND WITH KINDLY AFFECTION FOR WHAT IN HIM IS FAR NOBLER 
THAN GENIUS, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 

BY HIS FRIEND, 

THEODORE PAEKEE. 



* 
• 



PREFACE. 



I have often been asked by personal friends to publish 
a little volume of Sermons of Religion, which might come 
home to their business and bosoms in the joys and sorrows 
of their daily life. And nothing loth to do so without 
prompting, I have selected these which were originally 
part of a much longer course, and send them out, wish- 
ing that they may be serviceable in promoting the religious 
welfare of mankind on both sides of the ocean. They are 
not Occasional Sermons, like most of those I have lately 
published, which heavy emergencies pressed out of me ; but 
they have all, perhaps, caught a tinge from the events of 
the day when they were preached at first. For as a coun- 
try girl makes her festal wreath of such blossoms as the 
fields offer at the time, — of violets and wind-flowers in the 
spring, of roses and water-lilies in summer, and in autumn 
of the fringed gentian and the aster, — so must it be with 
the sermons which a minister gathers up under serene or 
stormy skies. This local coloring from time and circum- 
stances I am not desirous to wipe off ; so the sad or joyous 
aspect of the day will be found still tinging these printed 



vi 



PREFACE. 



Sermons, as indeed it colored the faces and tinged the 
prayers of such as heard them first. 

Sometimes the reader will find the same fundamental 
idea reappearing under various forms, in several places of 
this book ; and may perhaps also see the reason thereof in 
the fact, that it is the primeval Rock on which the whole 
thing rests, and of necessity touches the heavens in the 
highest mountains, and, receiving thence, gives water to the 
deepest wells which bottom thereon. 

I believe there are great Truths in this book, — both 
those of a purely intellectual character, and those, much 
more important, which belong to other faculties nobler than 
the mere intellect ; truths, also, which men need, and, as I 
think, at this time greatly need. But I fear that I have not 
the artistic skill so to present these needful truths that a 
large body of men shall speedily welcome them ; perhaps 
not the attractive voice which can win its way through the 
commercial, political, and ecclesiastical noises of the time, 
and reach the ears of any multitude. 

Errors there must be also in this book. I wish they 
might be flailed out and blown away ; and shall not com- 
plain if it be done even by a rough wind, so that the pre- 
cious Truths be left unbroke and clean after this winnowing, 
as bread-stuff for to-day, or as seed-corn for seasons yet 
to come. 

August 24th, 1852. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGE 

OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO MANLY LIFE 3 

II. 

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT 33 

III. 

OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE 66 

IV. 

OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS 102 

V. 

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL . . . 139 

YI. 

OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS . . .185 

VII. 

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH . ^ 225 

VIII. 

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY . . . 259 

IX. 

OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS . . 312 

X. 

OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 364 



4 



< 



SERMONS. 



) 



I. 



OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO 
MANLY LIFE. 



Thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. — matt. 
xxii. 37. 

There are two things requisite for complete and 
perfect religion, — the love of God and the love of 
man ; one I will call Piety, the other Goodness. In 
their natural development they are not so sharply 
separated as this language would seem to imply; 
for piety and goodness run into one another, so 
that you cannot tell where one begins and the other 
ends. But I will distinguish the two by their centre, 
where they are most unlike ; not by their circum- 
ference, where they meet and mingle. 

The part of man which is not body I will call 
the Spirit ; under that term including all the facul- 
ties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, 



4 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



distribute these faculties of the human spirit into 
four classes: the intellectual, — including the aes- 
thetic, — moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind 
be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including 
the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, 
and understanding; Conscience shall be the short 
name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and 
Soul for the religious faculties. 

I shall take it for granted that the great work of 
mankind on earth is to live a manly life, to use, 
discipline, develop, and enjoy every limb of the 
body, every faculty of the spirit, each in its just 
proportion, all in their proper place, duly coordinat- 
ing what is merely personal, and for the present 
time, with what is universal, and for ever. This 
being so, what place ought piety, the love of God, 
to hold in a manly life ? 

It seems to me, that piety lies at the basis of all 
manly excellence. It represents the universal action 
of man according to his nature. This universal 
action, the bent of the whole man in his normal 
direction, is the logical condition of any special 
action of man in a right direction, of any particu- 
lar bent that way. If I have a universal idea of 
universal causality in my mind, I can then under- 
stand a special cause ; but without that universal 
idea of causality in my mind, patent or latent, 
I could not understand any particular cause what- 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



5 



ever. My eye might see the fact of a man cut- 
ting down a tree, but my mind would comprehend 
only the conjunction in time and space, not their 
connection in causality. If you have not a uni- 
versal idea of beauty, you do not know' that this 
is a handsome and that a homely dress ; you notice 
only the form and color, the texture and the fit, but 
see no relation to an ideal loveliness. If you have 
not a universal idea of the true, the just, the holy, 
you do not comprehend the odds betwixt a correct 
statement and a lie, between the deed of the priest 
and that of the good Samaritan, between the fidel- 
ity of Jesus and the falseness of Iscariot. This 
rule runs through all human nature. The universal 
is the logical condition of the generic, the special, 
and the particular. So the love of God, the uni- 
versal object of the human spirit, is the logical con- 
dition of all manly life. 

This is clear, if you look at man acting in each 
of the four modes just spoken of, — intellectual, 
moral, affectional, and religious. 

The Mind contemplates God as manifested in 
truth ; for truth — in the wide meaning of the word 
including also a comprehension of the useful and 
the beautiful — is the universal category of intel- 
lectual cognition. To love God with the mind, is 
to love him as manifesting himself in the truth, or 
to the mind ; it is to love truth, not for its uses, but 
1* 



6 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



for itself, because it is true, absolutely beautiful 
and lovely to the mind. In finite things we 
read the infinite truth, the absolute object of the 
mind. 

Love of truth is a great intellectual excellence ; 
but it is plain you must have the universal love 
of universal truth before you can have any special 
love for any particular truth whatsoever ; for in all 
intellectual affairs the universal is the logical con- 
dition of the special. 

Love of truth in general is the intellectual part 
of piety. We see at once that this lies at the 
basis of all intellectual excellence, — at love of 
truth in art, in science, in law, in common life. 
Without it you may love the convenience of truth 
in its various forms, useful or beautiful; but that 
is quite different from loving truth itself. You often 
find men who love the uses of truth, but not truth ; 
they wish to have truth on their side, but not to 
be on the side of truth. When it does not serve 
their special and selfish turn, they are offended, and 
Peter breaks out with his " I know not the man," 
and "the wisest, brightest" proves also the "meanest 
of mankind." 

The Conscience contemplates God as manifested 
in right, in justice; for right or justice is the uni- 
versal category of moral cognition. To love God 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



7 



with the conscience, is to love him as manifested 
in right and justice ; is to love right or justice, not 
for its convenience, its specific uses, but for itself, 
because it is absolutely beautiful and lovely to the 
conscience. In changeable things we read the 
unchanging and eternal right, which is the absolute 
object of conscience. 

To love right is a great moral excellence ; but it 
is plain you must have a universal love of universal 
right before you can have any special love of a par- 
ticular right ; for, in all moral affairs, the universal 
is the logical condition of the special. 

The love of right is the moral part of piety. This 
lies at the basis of all moral excellence whatever. 
Without this you may love right for its uses ; but 
if only so, it is not right you love, but only the 
convenience it may bring to you in your selfish 
schemes. None was so ready to draw the sword 
for Jesus, or look after the money spent upon him, 
as the disciple who straightway denied and betrayed 
him. Many wish right on their side, who take 
small heed to be on the side of right. You shall 
find men enough who seem to love right in general, 
because they clamor for a specific, particular right ; 
but erelong it becomes plain they only love some 
limited or even personal convenience they hope 
therefrom. The people of the United States claim 
to love the unalienable right of man to life, lib- 

/ 



8 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



erty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the long- 
continued cry of three million slaves, groaning under 
the American yoke, shows beyond question or cavil 
that it is not the universal and unalienable right 
which they love, but only the selfish advantage it 
affords them. If you love the right as right, for 
itself, because it is absolutely just and beautiful 
to your conscience, then you will no more deprive 
another of it than submit yourself to be deprived 
thereof. Even the robber will fight for his own. 
The man who knows no better rests in the selfish 
love of the private use of a special right. 

The Heart contemplates God as manifested in 
love, for love is the universal category of affectional 
cognition. To love God with the heart, is to love 
him as manifested in love ; it is to love Love, not 
for its convenience, but for itself, because it is abso- 
lutely beautiful and lovely to the heart. 

Here I need not reiterate what has already been 
twice said, of mind and of conscience. 

Love of God as love, then, is the affectional part 
of piety, and lies at the basis of all affectional excel- 
lence. The mind and the conscience are content 
with ideas, with the true and the right, while the 
heart demands not ideas, but Beings, Persons ; and 
loves them. It is one thing to desire the love of a 
person for your own use and convenience, and 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



9 



quite different to have your personal delight in 
him, and desire him to have his personal delight 
in you. From the nature of the case, as persons 
are concrete and finite, man never finds the complete 
satisfaction of his affectional nature in them, for no 
person is absolutely lovely, none the absolute object 
of the affections. But as the mind and conscience 
use the finite things to help learn infinite truth and 
infinite right, and ultimately rest in that as their 
absolute object, so our heart uses the finite persons 
whom we reciprocally love as golden letters in the 
book of life, whereby we learn the absolutely lovely, 
the infinite object of the heart. As the philosopher 
has the stars of heaven, each lovely in itself, where- 
by to learn the absolute truth of science, — as the 
moralist has the events of human history, each of 
great moment to mankind, whereby to learn the 
absolute right of ethics, — so the philanthropist has 
the special persons of his acquaintance, each one a 
joy to him, as the rounds of his Jacob's ladder 
whereby he goes journeying up to the absolutely 
lovely, the infinite object of the affections. 

The Soul contemplates God as a being who 
unites all these various modes of action, as mani- 
fested in truth, in right, and in love. It appre- 
hends him, not merely as absolute truth, absolute 
right, and absolute love alone, but as all these uni- 



10 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



fied into one complete and perfect Being, the In- 
finite God. He is the absolute object of the soul, 
and corresponds thereto, as truth to the mind, as 
justice to the conscience, as love to the heart. He 
is to the soul absolutely true, just, and lovely, the 
altogether beautiful. To him the soul turns in- 
stinctively at first; then also, at length, with con- 
scious and distinctive will. 

The love of God in this fourfold way is the 
totality of piety, which comes from the normal use 
of all the faculties named before. Hence it appears 
that piety of this character lies at the basis of all 
manly excellence whatever, and is necessary to a 
complete and well-proportioned development of the 
faculties themselves. 

There may be an unconscious piety: the man 
does not know that he loves universal truth, jus- 
tice, love ; loves God. ♦ He qnly thinks of the 
special truth, justice, and love, which he prizes. 
He does not reflect upon it ; does not aim to love 
God in this way, yet does it, nevertheless. Many a 
philosopher has seemed without religion even to 
a careful observer; sometimes has passed for an 
atheist. Some of them have to themselves seemed 
without any religion, and have denied that there 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



11 



was any God. But all the while their nature was 
truer than their will; their instincts kept their per- 
sonal wholeness better than they were aware. These 
men loved absolute truth, not for its uses, but for 
itself ; they laid down their lives for it, rather than 
violate the integrity of their intellect. They had 
the intellectual love of God, though they knew 
it not; though they denied it. No man ever has 
a complete and perfect intellectual consciousness 
of all his active nature; something instinctive ger- 
minates in us, and grows under ground, as it were, 
before it bursts the sod and shoots into the light 
of self-consciousness. Sheathed in unconsciousness 
lies the bud, erelong to open a bright, consummate 
flower. These philosophers, with a real love of 
truth, and yet a scorn of the name of God, under- 
stand many things, perhaps, not known to common 
men, but this portion of their being has yet escaped 
their eye ; they have not made an exact and exhaus- 
tive inventory of the facts of their own nature. 
Such men have unconsciously much of the intellec- 
tual part of piety. 

Other men have loved justice, not for the per- 
sonal convenience it offered to them, but for its 
own sake, because it married itself to their con- 
science, — have loved it with a disinterested, even a 
self-denying love, — who yet scorned religion, denied 
all consciousness of God, denied his providence, 



12 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



perhaps his existence, and would have resolved 
God into matter, and no more. Yet all the while 
in these men, dim and unconscious, there lay the 
religious element; neglected, unknown, it gave the 
man the very love of special justice which made 
him strong. He knew the absolutely just, but did 
not know it as God. 

I have known philanthropists who undervalued 
piety ; they liked it not, — they said it was moon- 
light, not broad day ; it gave flashes of lightning, 
all of which would not make light. They professed 
no love of God, no knowledge thereof, while they 
had the strongest love of love ; loved persons, not 
with a selfish, but a self-denying affection, ready to 
sacrifice themselves for the completeness of another 
man's delight. Yet underneath this philanthropy 
there lay the absolute and disinterested love of other 
men. They knew only the special form, not the 
universal substance thereof, — the particular love of 
Thomas or of Jane, not the universal love of the 
Infinite. They had the affectional form of piety, 
though they knew it not. 

I have known a man full of admiration and of 
love for the universe, yet lacking consciousness of 
its Author. He loved the truth and beauty of the 
world, reverenced the justice of the universe, and 
was himself delighted at the love he saw pervad- 
ing all and blessing all ; yet he recognized no God, 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



13 



saw only a cosmic force, which was a power of 
truth and beauty to his mind, a power of justice 
to his conscience, and a power of love to his heart. 
He had not a philosophic consciousness of the 
deeper, nobler action which went on within him, 
building greater than he knew. But in him also 
there were the several parts of piety, only not joined 
into one total and integral act, and not distinctly 
known. 

This unconsciousness of piety is natural with a 
child. In early life it is unavoidable ; only now 
and then some rare and precious boy or girl opens 
from out its husk of unconsciousness his childish 
bud of faith, and blossoms right early with the con- 
sciousness of God, a " strong and flame-like flower." 
This instinctiveness of piety is the beauty of child- 
hood, the morning-red widely and gorgeously dif- 
fused before the rising of the sun. But as a man 
becomes mature, adds reflection to instinct, trans- 
mutes sentiments into ideas, he should also become 
conscious of his religious action, of his love of God 
in this fourfold form; when he loves truth, jus- 
tice, love, he should know that it is God he loves 
underneath these special forms, and should unite 
them all into one great act of total piety. As the 
state of self-consciousness is a more advanced state 
than unconsciousness ; as the reflective reason of the 
man is above the unreflective instinct of the child ; 
2 



14 



THE FOURFOLD FOP3I OF PIETY. 



so the man's conscious piety belongs to a higher 
stage of development, and is above the mere instinc- 
tive and unconscious piety of the girl. Accord- 
ingly, the philosopher who loved tmth for its own 
sake, and with his mind denied in words the God 
of truth, was less a philosopher for not knowing 
that he loved God. He had less intellectual power 
because he was in an abnormal state of intellectual 
religious growth. The man who loved justice for 
its own sake, and would not for an empire do a 
conscious wrong, whom the popular hell could not 
scare, nor the popular heaven allure from right, — 
he had less power of justice for not knowing that in 
loving right he loved the God of right. That phi- 
lanthropist who has such love of love, that he would 
lay down his life for men, is less a philanthropist, 
and has less affectional power, because he knows 
not that in his brave benevolence he loves the God 
of love. The man full of profound love of the 
universe, of reverence for its order, its beauty, its 
justice, and the love which fills the lily's cup with 
fragrant loveliness, who wonders at the mighty cos- 
mic force he sees in these fractions of power, — 
he is less a man because he does not know it is 
God's world that he admires, reverences, and wor- 
ships ; aye, far less a man because he does not 
know he loves and worships God. When he be- 
comes conscious of his own spiritual action, con- 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



15 



scious of God, of loving God with mind and con- 
science, heart and soul, his special love will in- 
crease, he will see the defects there are in his 
piety ; if it be disproportionate, through redun- 
dance here or failure there, he can correct the de- 
formity and make his entire inner life harmonious, 
a well-proportioned whole. Then he feels that he 
goes in and out, continually, in the midst of the 
vast forces of the universe, which are only the 
forces of God ; that in his studies, when he attains 
a truth, he confronts the thought of God; when 
he learns the right, he learns the will of God laid 
down as a rule of conduct for the universe ; and 
when he feels disinterested love, he knows that he 
partakes the feeling of the infinite God. Then, 
when he reverences the mighty cosmic force, it is 
not a blind Fate in an atheistic or a pantheistic 
world, it is the Infinite God that he confronts, 
and feels, and knows. He is then mindful of the 
mind of God, conscious of God's conscience, sensi- 
ble of God's sentiment, and his own existence is in 
the Infinite Being of God. Thus he joins into a 
whole integral state of piety the various parts de- 
veloped by the several faculties ; there is a new 
growth of each, a new development of all. 

If these things be so, then it is plain what rela- 
tion piety sustains to manly life ; — it is the basis 



16 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



of all the higher excellence of man, and when the 
man is mature, what was instinctive at first becomes 
a state of conscious love of God. 

Now, when this universal fourfold force is once 
developed and brought to consciousness, and the 
man has achieved something in this way, his piety 
may be left to take its natural form of expression, 
or it may be constrained to take a form not natural. 
Mankind has made many experiments upon piety ; 
books of history are full of them. Most of these, 
as of all the experiments of man in progress, are 
failures. We aim many times before we hit the 
mark. The history of religion is not exceptional 
or peculiar in this respect. See how widely men 
experiment in agriculture, navigation, government, 
before they learn the one right way. The history of 
science is the history of mistakes. The history of 
religion and the history of astronomy are equally 
marked by error. It is not surprising that mistakes 
have been made in respect to the forms of piety 
after it is procured. 

For there are various helps which are needful, 
and perhaps indispensable, in childhood, to the de- 
velopment of the love of God, but which are not 
needed after the religious character is somewhat 
mature. Then the man needs not those former out- 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



17 



ward helps ; he has other aids suited to his greater 
strength. This is true of the individual, repeating 
no more the hymns of his nursery, — true also of 
mankind, that outgrows the sacrifices and the my- 
thologies of the childhood of the world. Yet it 
is easy for human indolence to linger near these 
helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the unad- 
venturous nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his 
flock in the same close-cropped circle where they 
first learned to browse, while the progressive man 
roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures new." 
See how parents help develop the body of the 
child. The little boy is put into a standing-stool, 
or baby-jumper, till he learns to walk. By and by 
he has his hoop, his top, his ball; each in turn is 
laid aside. He has helps to develop his mind not 
less, — little puzzles, tempting him to contrive. — 
prints set off with staring colors ; he has his alpha- 
bet of wooden letters, in due time his primer, his 
nursery rhymes, and books full of most wonderful 
impossibilities. He has his early reader, his first 
lessons in arithmetic, and so goes on with new 
helps proportionate to his strength. It is a long 
slope from counting the fingers up to calculating 
the orbit of a planet not yet seen. But the fingers 
and the solar system are alike helps to mathematic 
thought. When the boy is grown up to man's 
estate, his body vigorous and mature, he tides his 

2* 



18 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



strength in the natural work of society, is a mer- 
chant, a sailor, a mechanic, a farmer; he hews 
stones, or lifts up an axe upon the thick timber. 
For a long time his body grows stronger by his 
work, and he gets more skill. His body pays for 
itself, and refunds to mankind the cost of its train- 
ing up. When his mind is mature, he applies that 
also to the various works of society, to transact 
private business, or manage the affairs of the public ; 
for a long time his mind grows stronger, gaining 
new knowledge and increase of power. Thus his 
mind pays for its past culture, and earns its tuition 
as it goes along. 

In this case the physical or mental power of the 
man assumes its natural form, and does its natural 
work. He has outgrown the things which pleased 
his childhood and informed his youth. Nobody 
thinks it necessary or beautiful for the accomplished 
scholar to go back to his alphabet, and repeat it 
over, to return to his early arithmetic and para- 
digms of grammar, when he knows them all; for 
this is not needful to keep an active mind in a 
normal condition, and perform the mental work of 
a mature man. Nobody sends a lumberer from the 
woods back to his nursery, or tells him he cannot 
keep his strength without daily or weekly sleeping 
in his little cradle, or exercising with the hoop, or 
top, or ball, which helped his babyhood. Because 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 19 

these little trifles sufficed once, they cannot help him 
now. Man, reaching forward, forgets the things that 
are behind. 

Now the mischief is, that, in matters of religion, 
men demand that he who has a mature and well- 
proportioned piety should always go back to the 
rude helps of his boyhood, to the A B C of religion 
and the nursery books of piety. He is not bid to 
take his power of piety and apply that to the com- 
mon works of life. The Newton of piety is sent 
back to the dame-school of religion, and told to 
keep counting his fingers, otherwise there is no 
health in him, and all piety is wiped out of his con- 
sciousness, and he hates God and God hates him. 
He must study the anicular lines on the school- 
dame's slate, not the diagrams of God writ on the 
heavens in points of fire. We are told that what 
once thus helped mould a religious character must 
be continually resorted to, and become the perma- 
nent form thereof. 

This notion is exceedingly pernicious. It wastes 
the practical power of piety by directing it from 
its natural work ; it keeps the steam-engine always 
fanning and blowing itself, perpetually firing itself 
up, while it turns no wheels but its own, and does 
no work but feed and fire itself. This constant 
firing up of one's self is looked on as the natural 
work and only form of piety. Ask any popular 



20 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



minister, in one of the predominant sects, for the 
man most marked for piety, and he will not show 
you the men with the power of business who do 
the work of life, — the upright mechanic, merchant, 
or farmer ; not the men with the power of thought, 
of justice, or of love ; not him whose whole life is 
one great act of fourfold piety. No, he will show 
you some men who are always a dawdling over 
their souls, going back to the baby-jumpers and 
nursery rhymes of their early days, and everlast- 
ingly coming to the church to fire themselves up, 
calling themselves "miserable offenders," and say- 
ing, " save us, good Lord." If a man thinks him- 
self a miserable offender, let him away with the 
offence, and be done with the complaint at once 
and for ever. It is dangerous to reiterate so sad 
a cry. 

You see this mistake, on a large scale, in the 
zeal with which nations or sects cling to their re- 
ligious institutions long after they are obsolete. 
Thus the Hebrew cleaves to his ancient ritual and 
ancient creed, refusing to share the religious sci- 
ence which mankind has brought to light since Mo- 
ses and Samuel went home to their God. The two 
great sects of Christendom exhibit the same thing in 
their adherence to ceremonies and opinions which 
once were the greatest helps and the highest ex- 
pression of piety to mankind, but which have long 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



21 



since lost all virtue except as relics. The same 
error is repeated on a small scale all about us, men 
trying to believe what science proves ridiculous, and 
only succeeding by the destruction of reason. It 
was easy to make the mistake, but when made it 
need not be made perpetual. 

Then this causes another evil : not only do men 
waste the practical power of piety, but they cease 
to get more. To feed on baby's food, to be dan- 
dled in mother's arms, — to play with boys' play- 
things, to learn boys' lessons, and be amused with 
boys' stories, — this helps the boy, but it hinders 
the man. Long ago we got from these helps all 
that w T as in them. To stay longer is waste of 
time. Look at the men who have been doing 
this for ten years ; they are where they were ten 
years ago. They have done well if they have not 
fallen back. If we keep the baby's shoes for ever 
on the child, what will become of the feet ? What 
if you kept the boy over his nursery rhymes for 
ever, or tried to make the man grown believe that 
they contained the finest poetry in the world, that 
the giant stories and the fairy tales therein were 
all true ; what effect would it have on his mind ? 
Suppose you told him that the proof of his man- 
hood consisted in his fondness for little boys' play- 
things, and the little story-books and the little games 
of little children, and kept him securely fastened 



22 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



to the apron-strings of the school-dame; suppose 
you could make him believe so ! You must make 
him a fool first. What would work so bad in 
intellectual affairs works quite as ill in the matter 
of piety. The story of the flood has strangled a 
world of souls. The miracles of the New Testa- 
ment no longer heal, but hurt mankind. 

Then this method of procedure disgusts well- 
educated and powerful men with piety itself, and 
with all that bears the name of religion. " Go 
your ways," say they, " and cant your canting as 
much as you like, only come not near us with your 
grimace." Many a man sees this misdirection of 
piety, and the bigotry which environs it, and turns 
off from religion itself, and will have nothing to 
do with it. Philosophers always have had a bad 
name in religious matters; many of them have 
turned away in disgust from the folly which is 
taught in its name. Of all the great philosophers 
of this day, I think no one takes any interest in 
the popular forms of religion. Do we ever hear 
religion referred to in politics? It is mentioned 
officially in proclamations and messages ; but in 
the parliamentary debates of Europe and Ameripa, 
in the State papers of the nations, you find hardly 
a trace of the name or the fact. Honest men and 
manly men are ashamed to refer to this, because it 
has been so connected with unmanly dawdling and 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



23 



niggardly turning back, — they dislike to mention 
the word. So religion has ceased to be one of the 
recognized forces of the State. I do not remember 
a good law passed in my time from an alleged 
religious motive. Capital punishment, and the laws 
forbidding work or play on Sunday, are the only 
things left on the statute-book for which a strict- 
ly "religious motive" is assigned! The annual 
thanksgivings and fast-days are mementos of the 
political power of the popular religious opinions 
in other times. Men of great influence in Amer- 
ica are commonly men of little apparent respect 
for religion ; it seems to have no influence on their 
public conduct, and, in many cases, none on their 
private character ; the class most eminent for intel- 
lectual culture, throughout all Christendom, is heed- 
less of religion. The class of rich men has small 
esteem for it ; yet in all the great towns of America 
the most reputable churches have fallen under their 
control, with such results as we see. The life of 
the nation in its great flood passes by, and does 
not touch the churches, — "the institutions of re- 
ligion." Such fatal errors come from this mis- 
take. 

But there is a natural form of piety. The natu- 
ral use of the strength of a strong man, or the wis- 
dom of a wise one, is to the work of a strong 



24 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



man or a wise one. What is the natural work of 
piety ? Obviously it is practical life ; the use of all 
the faculties in their proper spheres, and for their 
natural function. Love of God, as truth, justice, 
love, must appear in a life marked by these quali- 
ties ; that is the only effectual " ordinance of re- 
ligion." A profession of the man's convictions, 
joining a society, assisting at a ceremony, — all 
these are of the same value in science as in re- 
ligion ; as good forms of chemistry as of piety. 
The natural form of piety is goodness, morality, 
living a true, just, affectionate, self-faithful life, from 
the motive of a pious man. Real piety, love of 
God, if left to itself, assumes the form of real 
morality, loyal obedience to God's law. Thus the 
power of religion does the work of religion, and is 
not merely to feed itself. 

There are various degrees of piety, the quality 
ever the same, the quantity variable, and of course 
various degrees of goodness as the result thereof. 
"Where there is but little piety, the work of good- 
ness is done as a duty, under coercion as it were, 
with only the voluntary, not the spontaneous will ; 
it is not done from a love of the duty, only in obe- 
dience to a law of God felt within the conscience 
or the soul, a law which bids the deed. The 
man's desires and duty are in opposition, not con- 
junction; but duty rules. That is the goodness 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



25 



of a boy in religion, the common goodness of the 
world. 

At length the rising man shoots above this rudi- 
mentary state, has an increase of love of God, and 
therefore of love of man ; his goodness is spontane- 
ous, not merely enforced by volition. He does the 
good thing which comes in his way, and because it 
comes in his way; is true to his mind, his con- 
science, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation 
to do to others what he would not receive from 
them ; he will deny himself for the sake of his 
brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the 
line of his duty, both in conjunction now. Not 
in vain does the poor, the oppressed, the hunted 
fugitive look up to him. This is the goodness of 
men well grown in piety. You find such men 
in all Christian sects, Protestant and Catholic; in 
all the great religious parties of the civilized world, 
among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They 
are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable 
in their business, beautiful in their daily lives. You 
see the man's piety in his work, and in his play. 
It appears in all the forms of his activity, individual, 
domestic, social, ecclesiastic, or political. 

But the man goes on in his growth of piety r 
loving truth, justice, love, loving God the more. 
What is piety within must be morality without. 
The quality and quantity of the outward must 
3 



26 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



increase as the quality and quantity of the inward. 
So his eminent piety must become eminent morality, 
which is philanthropy. He loves not only his kin- 
dred and his country, but all mankind ; not only 
the good, but also the evil. He has more good- 
ness than the channels of his daily life will hold. 
So it runs over the banks, to water and to feed 
a thousand thirsty plants. Not content with the 
duty that lies along his track, he goes out to seek 
it; not only wiling, he has a salient longing to 
do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his love, 
his piety, over all the world. His daily life is a pro- 
fession of his conscious piety to God, published in 
perpetual good-will to men. 

This is the natural form of piety; one which it 
assumes if left to itself. Not more naturally does 
the beaver build, or the blackbird sing her own 
wild gushing melody, than the man of real piety 
lives it in this beautiful outward life. So from 
the perennial spring wells forth the stream to 
quicken the meadow with new access of green, 
and perfect beauty bursting into bloom. 

Thus piety does the work it was meant to do: 
the man does not sigh and weep, and make grim- 
aces, for ever in a fuss about his soul ; he lives 
right on. Is Ms life marked with errors, sins, — he 
ploughs over the barren spot with his remorse, sows 
with new seed, and the old desert blossoms like a 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



27 



rose. He is free in his spiritual life, not confined 
to set forms of thought, of action, or of feeling. 
He accepts what his mind regards as true, what 
his conscience decides is right, what his heart 
deems lovely, and what is holy to his soul ; all else 
he puts far from him. Though the ancient and 
the honorable of the earth bid him bow down to 
them, his stubborn knees bend only at the bidding 
of his manly soul. His piety is his freedom before 
God, not his bondage unto men. The toys and 
child's stories of religion are to him toys and child's 
stories, but no more. No baby-shoes deform his 
manly feet. 

This piety, thus left to obey its natural law, 
keeps in sound health, and grows continually more 
and more. Doing his task, the man makes no more 
ado about his soul than about his sense. Yet 
it grows like the oak-tree. He gets continually 
more love of truth and right and justice, more love 
of God, and so more love of man. Every faculty 
becomes continually more. His mind acts after 
the universal law of the intellect, his conscience 
according to the universal moral law, his affections 
and his soul after the universal law thereof, and 
so he is strong with the strength of God, in 
this fourfold way communicating with him. With 
this strengthening of the moral faculties there comes 
a tranquillity, a calmness and repose, which nothing 



28 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



else can give, and also a beauty of character which 
you vainly seek elsewhere. When a man has the 
intellectual, the moral, the affectional part of piety, 
when he unites them all with conscious love of 
God, and puts that manifold piety into morality, 
his eminent piety into philanthropy, he attains 
the highest form of loveliness which belongs to 
mortal man. His is the palmy loftiness of man, — 
such strength, such calmness, and such transcendent 
loveliness of soul. 

I know some men mock at the name of piety; 
I do not wonder at their scoff; for it has been 
made to stand as the symbol of littleness, meanness, 
envy, bigotry, and hypocritical superstition ; for 
qualities I hate to name. Of what is popularly 
called piety there is no lack ; it is abundant 
everywhere, common as weeds in the ditch, and 
clogs the wheels of mankind in every quarter of 
the world. Yet real piety, in manly quantity 
and in a manly form, is an uncommon thing. It 
is marvellous what other wants the want of this 
brings in : look over the long list of brilliant names 
that glitter in English history for the past three 
hundred years, study their aims, their outward and 
their inner life ; explore the causes of their mani- 
fold defeat, and you will see the primal curse 
of all these men was lack of piety. They did not 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



29 



love truth, justice, or love ; they did not love God 
with all their mind and conscience, heart and soul. 
Hence came the failure of many a mighty-minded 
man. Look at the brilliant array of distinguished 
talent in France for the last five generations ; what 
intellectual gifts, what understanding, what imagi- 
nation, what reason, but with it all what corruption, 
what waste of faculty, what lack of strong and calm 
and holy life, in these great, famous men ! Their 
literature seems marvellously like the thin, cold 
dazzle of Northern Lights upon the wintry ice. In 
our own country it is still the same ; the high intel- 
lectual gift or culture is ashamed of religion, and 
flouts at God ; and hence the faults we see. 

But real piety is what we need ; we need much 
of it, — need it in the natural form thereof. Ours 
is an age of great activity. The peaceful hand was 
never so busy as to-day ; the productive head never 
created so fast before. See how the forces of nature 
yield themselves up to man : the river stops for him, 
content to be his servant, and weave and spin ; the 
ocean is his vassal, his toilsome bondsman ; the 
lightning stoops out of heaven, and bears thought- 
ful burdens on its electric track from town to 
town. All this comes from the rapid activity of 
the lower intellect of man. Is there a conscious 
piety to correspond with this, — a conscious love 
of truth and right and love, — a love of God ? 

3* 



30 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



Ask the State, ask the church, ask society, and ask 
our homes. 

The age requires a piety most eminent. What 
was religion enough for the time of the Patriarchs, 
or the Prophets, or the Apostles, or the Reformers, 
or the Puritans, is not enough for the heightened 
consciousness of mankind to-day. When the world 
thinks in lightning, it is not proportionate to pray in 
lead. The old theologies, the philosophies of re- 
ligion of ancient times, will not suffice us now. 
We want a religion of the intellect, of the con- 
science, of the affections, of the soul, — the natural 
religion of all the faculties of man. The form also 
must be natural and new. 

We want this natural piety in the form of normal 
human life, — morality, philanthropy. Piety is not 
to forsake, but possess the world; not to become 
incarnate in a nun and a monk, but in women and 
in men. Here are the duties of life to be done. 
You are to do them, do them religiously, conscious- 
ly obedient to the law of God, not atheistically, 
loving only your selfish gain. Here are the sins of 
trade to be corrected. You are to show that a good 
merchant, mechanic, farmer, doctor, lawyer, is a real 
saint, a saint at work. Here are the errors of phi- 
losophy, theology, politics, to be made way with. 
It is the function of piety to abolish these and sup- 
ply their place with new truths all radiant with God. 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



31 



Here are the great evils of church and State, of 
social and domestic life, wrongs to be righted, evils 
to be outgrown : it is the business of piety to mend 
all this. Ours is no age when Religion can forsake 
the broad way of life. In the public street must she 
journey on, open her shop in the crowded square, 
and teach men by deeds, her life more eloquent than 
any lips. Hers is not now the voice that is to cry 
in the wilderness, but in the public haunts of men 
must she call them to make straight their ways. 

We must possess all parts of this piety, — the 
intellectual, moral, affectional, — yea, total piety. 
This is not an age when men in religions name 
can safely sneer at philosophy, call reason " carnal," 
make mouths at immutable justice, and blast with 
their damnation the faces of mankind. Priests have 
had their day, and in dull corners still aim to pro- 
tract their favorite and most ancient night ; but the 
sun has risen with healing in his wings. Piety 
without goodness, without justice, without truth or 
love, is seen to be the pretence of the hypocrite. 
Can philosophy satisfy us without religion ? Even 
the head feels a coldness from the want of piety. 
The greatest intellect is ruled by the same integral 
laws with the least, and needs this fourfold love of 
God; and the great intellects that scorn religion are 
largest sufferers from their scorn. 

Any man may attain this piety ; it lies level to all. 



32 



THE FOURFOLD FORM OF PIETY. 



Yet it is not to be won without difficulty, manly 
effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the high- 
est in us. Of you, young man, young maid, it will 
demand both prayer and toil. Not without great 
efforts are great heights won. In your period of 
passion you must subordinate instinctive desire to 
your reason, your conscience, your heart and soul ; 
the lust of the body to the spirit's love. In the 
period of ambition you must coordinate all that is 
personal or selfish with what is absolutely true, just, 
holy, and good. Surely this will demand self-de- 
nial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish am- 
bition. Much you must sacrifice. But you will 
gain the possession, the use, the development, and 
the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and 
soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holi- 
ness, or love. All these you will gain ; gain for 
to-day, gain for ever. What inward blessedness 
will you acquire ! what strength, what tranquillity, 
what loveliness, what joy in God! You will have 
your delight in Him ; He his in you. Is it not 
worth while to live so that you know you are in 
unison with God ; in unison, too, with men ; in 
quantity growing more, in quality superior ? Make 
the trial for manly excellence, and the result is 
yours, for time and for eternity. 



II. 



OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



BUY THE TRUTH, AND SELL IT NOT; ALSO WISDOM, AND IN- 
STRUCTION, AND UNDERSTANDING. — PrOV. Xxiii. 23. 

Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preser- 
vation of divine order in the body. It is the har- 
mony of all the members thereof ; the true sym- 
metry and right proportion of part with part, of each 
with all, and so the worship of God with every 
limb of the body. Wisdom is to the mind what 
temperance, in this sense, is to the body ; it is 
intellectual piety ; the presence of divine order in 
the mind: the harmony of all the faculties thereof; 
the true symmetry and right proportion of faculty 
with faculty, of each with all. It is a general 
power of intellect, which may turn in any one 
or in all directions; the poet is a wise man in 
what relates to poetry; the philosopher, the states- 
man, the man of business, each in what relates to 
his particular function. So it is a general power of 



34 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



mind. "We say " knowledge is power," but mean 
wisdom, which is general intellectual ability, the 
power of knowing and of using truth. 

This wisdom implies two things : the love of 
truth as truth, which I spoke of the other day as 
the intellectual side of piety; and, secondly, the 
power to possess and use this truth, either in the 
specific form which is sought by the philosopher, 
poet, statesman, and man of business, or else in 
some more general form including all these ; the 
power of getting truth either by the mode of reflec- 
tion, as truth demonstrated, or by the mode of intui- 
tion, as truth seen and known at sight. For the 
acquisitive part of wisdom is the generic power 
which includes both the specific powers, — of intui- 
tion and of reflection. 

Truth is the object which corresponds to the 
mind. As the eye has the power of sight, and as 
the special things we see are the object of the eye, 
so is truth, in its various forms, the object of the 
mind. If a man keep the law of his body, in the 
large sense of the word Temperance, he acquires 
three good things, health, strength, and beauty. 
As a general rule these three will come ; there are, 
indeed, particular and personal exceptions, but such 
is the rule. Let any race of men, say the New 
En glanders, for a hundred years fulfil all the con- 
ditions of the body, and observe the laws thereof, 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



35 



they will become distinguished for these three 
things. 

In like manner, if a man keep the law of his 
mind, and fulfil its natural conditions, he acquires 
wisdom, — acquires intellectual health, strength, and 
beauty. Here also there may be particular and 
personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let 
any race of men, say the New Englanders, for a 
hundred years fulfil the natural condition of mind 
and keep the law thereof, we should have these 
three qualities to a greater degree than the ancient 
inhabitants of Athens, long regarded as the most 
intellectual race in the world; we should have the 
quality of wisdom which they had, but with more 
intellectual health, strength, and loveliness, more 
truth and more power to use it, inasmuch as the 
human race has acquired a greater intellectual 
development in the two thousand years that have 
passed since the days of Aristotle and Alexander. 
The laws which regulate the development of mind, 
in the individual or the race, are as certain as the 
laws of matter. Observance thereof is sure to bring 
certain consequences to the individual, the nation, 
and mankind. The intellectual peculiarity of a 
nation is transmitted from age to age, and only 
disappears when the nation perishes or mingles 
with some other tribe inferior to itself ; then it does 
not cease, but is spread more thinly over a wider 



36 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



field, and does not appear in its ancient form for 
years to come. Intellectual talent dies out of a 
particular family. There are seldom two men of 
genius of the same name. Stuarts and Tudors, 
Guelphs and Bourbons, there are in abundance, 
but only one Luther, Shakspeare, Milton, Crom- 
well, Burns; only a single Franklin or Washington. 
But the intellectual power which once rose up in 
such men does not perish from the race, only from 
the special family. It comes up in other names, 
for the fee of all the genius that is born, as well 
as the achievements won, vests perpetually in man- 
kind; not in the special family which holds only 
its life-estate of talent under the race and of it. 
The wisdom which this generation shall develop, 
foster, and mature, will not perish with this age ; 
it will be added to the spiritual property of man- 
kind, and go down, bequeathed as a rich legacy, 
to such as come after us, all the more valuable 
because it is given in perpetual entail, a property 
which does not waste, but greatens in the use. Yet 
probably no great man of this age will leave a 
child as great as himself. At death the father's 
greatness becomes public property to the next gen- 
eration. The piety of Jesus of Nazareth did not 
die out of mankind when he gave up the ghost; 
the second century had more of Christ than the 
first; there has been a perpetual increase of So- 



TEUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



37 



cratic excellence ever since the death of the Athe- 
nian sage. 

This is a remarkable law of Providence, but a 
law it is; and cheering is it to know that all the 
good qualities you give example of, not only have 
a personal immortality in you beyond the grave, 
but a national, even a human, immortality on earth, 
and f while they bless you in heaven, are likewise 
safely invested in your brother man, and shall go 
down to the last posterity, blessing your nation 
and all mankind. So the great men of antiquity 
continue to help us, — Moses, Confucius, Buddha, 
Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, — not to 
dwell upon the name dearest of all. These men 
and their fellows, known to all or long since for- 
gotten of mankind, — the aristocracy of heaven, 
whose patent of nobility dates direct from God, — 
they added to the spiritual power of mankind. 
The wisdom they inherited or acquired was a per- 
sonal fief, which at their death reverted to the 
human race. Not a poor boy in Christendom, not 
a man of genius, rejoicing in the plenitude of power, 
but is greater and nobler for these great men ; not 
barely through his knowledge of their example, but 
because, so to say, they raised the temperature of 
the human world. For, as there is a physical tem- 
perature of the interstellar spaces, betwixt sun and 
sun, which may be called the temperature of the 
4 



38 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



universe, so is there a spiritual temperature of the 
interpersonal spaces, a certain common temperature 
of spirit, not barely personal, not national alone, 
but human and of the race, which may be called 
the temperature of mankind. On that in general 
we all depend, as on our family in special, or 
in particular upon our personal genius and our 
will. Those great men added wisdom to mankind, 
brought special truths to consciousness, which now 
have spread throughout the enlightened nations of 
the world, and penetrate progressively the human 
mass, giving mankind continual new power. So 
shall you see an iron bar become magnetic ; first 
it was a single atom of the metal which caught 
the electric influence, spark by spark ; that atom 
could not hold the subtile fire, whose nature was 
to spread, and so one atom gave the spark to the 
next, and soon it spread through the whole, till 
the cold iron, which before seemed dead as stone, 
is all magnetic, acquires new powers, and itself 
can hold its own, yet magnetize a thousand bars 
if rightly placed. 

According to his nature man loves truth with a 
pure and disinterested love, the strongest intellec- 
tual affection. The healthy eye does not more 
naturally turn to the light, than the honest mind 
turns toward the truth. See how we seek after it 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



39 



in nature. All the National Academies, Institutes, 
and Royal Societies are but so many companies 
organized for the pursuit of truth, — of truth chiefly 
in some outward form, materialized in the visible 
world. These societies propose no corporeal benefit 
to themselves, none to the human race. They love 
each truth of nature for its own fair sake. What 
is the pecuniary value of the satellites of Neptune 
to us ? See how laborious naturalists ransack the 
globe to learn the truths writ in its elements. One 
goes to Florida to look after the bones of a masto- 
don, hid in a bog some thousands of years ago ; 
another curiously collects chips of stone from all 
the ledges of the world, lives and moves and has 
his being in the infra-carboniferous sandstones and 
shales, a companion of fossil plants and fossil shells* 
This crosses land and ocean to study the herbage 
of the earth ; that, careless of ease and homefelt 
joys, devotes his life to mosses and lichens, which 
grow unheeded on the rocks ; he loves them as if 
they were his own children, yet they return no 
corresponding smile, nor can he eat and drink of 
them. How the astronomer loves to learn the truth 
of the stars, which will not light his fire nor fill 
his children's hungry mouths ! No Inquisition can 
stop Galileo in his starry quest. I have known a 
miser who loved money above all things ; for this, 
would sacrifice reason, conscience, and religion, and 



40 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



break affection's bond ; but it was the use of money 
that was loved, with a mean and most ignoble 
selfish lust, vulgarizing and depraving the man. 
The true disciple of science loves truth far more, 
with a disinterested love; will endure toil, priva- 
tion, and self-denial, and encounter suffering, for 
that. This love of truth will bless the lover all 
his days ; yet when he brings her home, his fair- 
faced bride, she comes empty-handed to his door, 
herself her only dower. 

How carefully men look after the facts of human 
history ! how they study the tragic tale of Greece 
and Rome, and explore the remains of nations that 
long since have perished from the earth ! Of what 
material consequence is it to us who composed 
the Iliad, twenty-five hundred years ago, or whether 
Homer wrote, or only sung, his never-dying song? 
Yet what a mass of literature has come into being 
within the last sixty years to settle these two ques- 
tions ! How the famous scholars light their lamps 
and dim their eyes over this work, and how the 
world rejoices in their books, which will not bake 
bread, nor make two blades of grass grow where 
only one rose up before ; which will not build a 
railroad, nor elect a president, nor give a man an 
office in any custom-house of the wide world ! 
There is a deep love of truth in men, even in 
these poor details. A natural king looks royal at 
the plough. 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



41 



How men study yet higher modes of truth, writ 
in the facts of human consciousness ! How the 
ablest men have worked at the severest forms of 
intellectual toil, yet proposing no gain to them- 
selves, only the glorious godliness of truth! A 
corporeal gain to men does come from every such 
truth. There is such a solidarity betwixt the mind 
and body, that each spiritual truth works welfare 
in the material world, and the most abstract of 
ideas becomes concrete in the widest universe of 
welfare. But philosophers love the truth before 
they learn its material use. Aristotle, making an 
exhaustive analysis of the mind of man, did not 
design to build a commonwealth in New England, 
and set up public schools. 

This love of truth, instinctive and reflective both, 
is so powerful in human nature, that mankind 
will not rest till we have an idea corresponding 
to every fact of Nature and of human conscious- 
ness, and the contents of the universe are repeated 
in the cosmic mind of man, which grasps the 
whole of things. The philosophic work of obser- 
vation, analysis, and synthesis, will not be over, 
till the whole world of material nature is com- 
prehended by the world of human nature. Such 
is our love, not only of special truths, but of total 
truth. 

Consider what an apparatus man has devised 
4* 



42 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



to aid the search for truth: not only visible tools 
to magnify the little and bring near us the remote, 
but the invisible weapons of the mind, — mathe- 
matics and the various sciences, the mining-tools 
with which we dig for truth, — logic, the Lydian 
stone to test the true, — rhetoric, the art to com- 
municate, — language, speech itself, the most amaz- 
ing weapon of the human mind, an instrument 
half made on purpose, and half given without our 
thought. 

This love of truth is the natural and instinctive 
piety of the mind. In studying the facts of nature, 
material or human, I study the thought of God; 
for in the world of real things a fact is the 
direct speech of the Father. Words make up the 
language of men ; facts and ideas are the words 
of God, his universal language to the Englishman 
and the Chinese, in which He speaks from all 
eternity to all time. Man made "in the image of 
God" loves his Father's thought, and is not con- 
tented till he hears that speech; then he is satis- 
fied. All intellectual error is but the babble of the 
baby-man. Every truth which I know is one point 
common to my consciousness and the consciousness 
of God; in this we approach, and, so far as that 
goes, God's thought is my thought, and we are 
at one. Mankind will not be content till we also 
are conscious of the universe, and have mastered 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



43 



this Bible of God writ in the material world, a per- 
petual lesson for the day. 

I cannot think we value wisdom high enough ; 
not in proportion to other things for more vulgar 
use. We prize the material results of wisdom 
more than the cause which produces them. Let 
us not undervalue the use. What is it which 
gives Christendom its rank in the world ? What 
gives Old England or New England her material 
delight, — our comfortable homes, our mills and 
ships and shops, these iron roads which so cover 
the land ? It is not the soil, hard and ungrateful ; 
not the sky, cold and stormy half the year; it is 
the educated mind, the practical wisdom of the 
people. The Italian has his sunnier sky, his la- 
bored land, which teems with the cultured luxuri- 
ance of three thousand years. Our outfit was the 
wilderness and our head. God gave us these, and 
said, " Subdue the earth ; " and we have toiled at 
the problem, not quite in vain. The mind is a 
universal tool, the abstract of all instruments ; it 
concretizes itself in the past present and future 
weapons of mankind. 

We value wisdom chiefly for its practical use, as 
the convenience of a weapon, not the function of 
a limb ; and truth as a servant, not a bride. The 
reason of this seeming falseness to the intellectual 



44 



TRUTH AXD THE INTELLECT. 



instinct is found partly in the low development 
of man, — the external precedes the spiritual in 
order of unfolding, — and partly in this, that the 
human race is still too poor to indulge in merely 
intellectual delights, while material wants are not 
yet satisfied. Mankind rejoices in rough aprons 
of camel's hair, and feeds on locusts and wild 
honey, before there is purple and fine linen for all, 
with sumptuous faring every day. Even now a 
fourth part of the human family is as good as 
naked. It is too soon to ask men to rejoice ex- 
clusively in the beauty of wisdom, when they need 
its convenience so much. Let us not be too severe 
in our demands of men. God w suffereth lonof. and 
is kind.*' 

Then, sour theologies confront us, calling wisdom 
u foolish," reason " carnal," scoffing at science with 
a priestly sneer, as if knowledge of God, of God's 
world, and of its laws, could disturb the natural 
service of God. We are warned against the ;; arro- 
gance of the philosopher," but by the arrogance 
of the priest. We are told to shun "the pride 
of wisdom;" alas! it is sometimes the pride of 
folly which gives the caution. 

It seems to me, that the value of the intellect 
is a little underrated by some writers in the Xew 
Testament, and wisdom sometimes turned off rather 
rudely. Perhaps the reason was, that then, as 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 45 



now, men often cultivated the mind alone, and 
not the highest faculties of that; and, though ever 
learning, never hit the truth. Doubtless men of 
accomplished mind and manners sneered at the rude- 
ness of the Galilean, and with their demonstrations 
sought to parry the keen intuitions of great-souled 
men. It is not to be wondered at, that James 
attacked the rich, and Paul the learned, of their 
time. Fox and Bunyan did the same. Many a 
Christian Father has mocked at all generous culture 
of the mind. Even now, with us, amongst men 
desiring to be religious, there is an inherited fear 
of reason and of common sense. Science is thought 
a bad companion for religion. Men are cautioned 
against " free thinking " in religion, and, as all 
thinking must be free, against all thinking in that 
quarter. Even common sense is thought danger- 
ous. Men in pews are a little afraid, when a 
strong man goes into the pulpit, lest he should 
shake the ill-bottomed fabric to the ground; men 
in pulpits are still more fearful. It is a strange 
fear, that the mind should drive the soul out of us, 
and our knowledge of God annihilate our love of 
God. Yet some earnest men quake with this panic 
terror, and think it is not quite safe to follow the 
records writ in the great Bible of Nature, its world- 
wide leaves laid open before us, with their " millions 
of surprises." 



46 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



Let me say a word in behalf of the largest cul- 
ture of the intellect, of all faculties thereof, — under- 
standing, imagination, reason. I admit there have 
been men of able mind and large intellectual de- 
velopment who have turned off from religion, their 
science driving them away from the doctrines taught 
in this name. But such men have been few. Did 
they oppose the truths of religion ? Oftener the 
follies taught in its name. All the attacks made 
on religion itself by men of science, from Celsus 
to Feuerbach, have not done so much to bring 
religion into contempt as a single persecution for 
witchcraft, or a Bartholomew massacre, made in 
the name of God. At this day, in America, the 
greatest argument against the popular form of 
religion is offered by the churches of the land, 
a twofold argument : first, the follies taught as 
religious doctrine, the character assigned to God, 
the mode of government ascribed to him, both 
here and hereafter, the absurdities and impossi- 
bilities taught as the history of God's dealing 
with mankind ; next, the actual character of these 
churches, as a body never rebuking a popular and 
profitable sin, but striking hands by turns with 
every popular form of wrong. Men of science, as 
a class, do not war on the truths, the goodness, and 
the piety that are taught as religion, only on the 
errors, the evil, the impiety, which bear its name. 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



47 



Science is the natural ally of religion. Shall we 
try and separate what God has joined? "We injure 
both by the attempt. The philosophers of this 
age have a profound love of truth, and show 
great industry and boldness in search thereof. In 
the name of truth they pluck down the strong-holds 
of error, venerable and old. But what a cry has 
been raised against them! It was pretended that 
they would root out religion from the hearts of 
mankind! It seems to me it would be better for 
men who love religion to understand philosophy 
before they declaim against " the impiety of modern 
science." The study of Nature, of human history, 
or of human nature might be a little more profit- 
able than the habit of " hawking at geology and 
schism/' A true philosophy is the only cure for 
a false philosophy. The sensational scheme of 
philosophy has done a world of harm, it seems to 
me, in its long history from Epicurus to Comte ; 
but no-philosophy would be far worse. The abne- 
gation of mind must be the abnegation of God. 
The systems built by priests, who deemed reason 
not fit to trust, are more dangerous than " infidel 
science." Those have been found sad periods of 
time, when the ablest men were forced to spend 
their strength in pulling down the monstrous pa- 
godas built in the name of religion, full of idols 
and instruments of torture. Epicurus, Lucretius, 



48 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



Voltaire, even Hobbes and Hume, performed a 
work indispensable to the religious development 
of mankind. Yet destruction is a sad work ; — set 
your old house afire, you do not know how much 
of it will burn down. It was the ignorance, the 
folly, the arrogance, and the tyranny of a priest- 
hood which made necessary the scoff of Lucian and 
the haughty scorn of D'Holbach. The science of 
philosophers cannot be met by the ignorance of the 
priests ; the pride of wisdom is more than a match 
for the pride of folly; the philosophy of an unwel- 
come demonstration is ill answered by the preach- 
ing of foolishness. How can a needle's eye em- 
brace a continent ? In the name of religion, I 
would call for the spirit of wisdom without meas- 
ure; have free thinking on the Bible, on the 
Church, on God and man, — the largest liberty of 
the intellect. I would sooner have an unreasonable 
form of agriculture than of religion. The state of 
religion is always dependent, in a good measure, 
on the mental culture of mankind. A foolish man 
cannot give you a wise form of piety. All men 
by nature love truth. Cultivate their mind, they 
will see it, know it, value it. Just now we need a 
large development of mind in the clergy, who fall 
behind the men of leading intellect in England, 
America, and France. Thinking men care little 
for the " opinions of the clergy," except on the 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



49 



mere formalities of a ritual and church-show. De- 
pend upon it, the effect will be even more baneful 
for the future than at present. 

I love to look on the wise mind as one means 
of holding communion with the Infinite God ; for 
I believe that He inspires men, not only through the 
conscience, the affections, and the soul, but also 
through the intellect — through the reason, imagina- 
tion, and understanding. But he does this, not 
arbitrarily, miraculously, against the nature of the 
mind, but by a mode of operation as constant as 
the gravitation of planets or the chemical attrac- 
tion of atoms of metal. Yet I do not find that He 
inspires thoughtless men with truth, more than 
malicious men with love. Tell me God inspired 
the Hebrew saints with wisdom, filled the vast urns 
of Moses and of Jesus ; I believe it, but not Hebrew 
saints alone. The Grecian saints, the saints of 
Rome, of Germany, of France, of either England, 
Old or New; all the sons of men hang on the 
breasts of Heaven, and draw inspiration from Him 
" in whom we live and move and have our being." 
Intellectual inspiration comes in the form of truth, 
but the income from God is proportionate to the 
wisdom which seeks and so receives. A mind 
small as a thimble may be filled full thereof, but 
will it receive as much as a mind whose ocean- 
bosom is thirsty for a whole heaven of truth? 

5 



50 



TRUTH AXD THE INTELLECT. 



Bring larger intellect, and you have the more. A 
drop would overflow a hollow cherry-stone, while 
whole Mediterranean Seas fill but a fraction of the 
Atlantic's mighty deep. There still is truth in the 
sweet heaven, near and waiting for mankind. A 
man of little mind can only take in the contents of 
his primer ; he should not censure his neighbor whose 
encyclopedic head dines on the science of mankind, 
and still wanders crying for lack of meat. 

How mankind loves the truth ! We will not let 
it go; 

" One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost ;" 

so native is it to the mind of man. Look on the 
power of a special truth, a great idea; view it 
merely as a force in the world of men. At first, 
nothing seems so impotent. It has no hands nor 
feet ; how can it go alone ? It seems as if the 
censor of the press could blot it out for ever. It 
flatters no man, offers to serve no personal and 
private interest and then forbear its work, will be 
no man's slave. It seems ready to perish; surely 
it will give up the ghost the next moment. There 
now, a priest has it in the dust and stamps it out ! 
O idle fear! stamp on the lightning of the sky! 
Of all things truth is the most lasting ; invulnerable 
as God ; " of the Eternal coeternal beam," shall 



TRUTH AXD THE INTELLECT. 



51 



we call it an accident of his being, or rather sub- 
stance of the substance of God, inseparable from 
Him ? The pyramids may fall, in ages of time 
the granite be crumbled into dust and blown off 
by the sirocco of the wilderness ; the very moun- 
tains, whence they first were hewn, may all vanish, 
evaporate to the sky and spread over the world ; 
but truth shall still remain, immortal, unchang- 
ing, and not growing old. Heaven and earth may 
pass away, but a truth never. A true word can- 
not fail from amongst men ; it is indorsed by 
the Almighty, and shall pass current with man- 
kind for ever. Could the armies of the world alter 
the smallest truth of mathematics; make one and 
one greater or less than two ? As easily as they 
can alter any truth, or any falsehood, in morals, 
in politics, or in religion. A lie is still a lie, a truth 
a truth. 

See the power of some special truth upon a sin- 
gle man. Take an example from a high mode of 
truth, a truth of religion. Saul of Tarsus sees that 
God loves the Gentile as well as the Jew. It 
seems a small thing to see that. Why did men 
ever think otherwise? Why should not God love 
the Gentile as well as the Jew ? It was impossi- 
ble that He should do otherwise. Yet this seemed 
a great truth at that time, the Christian Church 
dividing upon that matter. It burnt in the bosom 



52 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



of Paul of Tarsus, then a young man. What 
heroism it wakens in him ! what self-denial he can 
endure ! Want, hardships, persecution, the con- 
tempt and loathing of his companions and former 
friends, shipwreck, scourging, prison, death, — all 
these are nothing to him. A truth has inspired 
him ; he is eloquent with its new force, his letters 
powerful. Go where he will he finds foes, the 
world bristling with peril ; but go where he may 
he makes friends, makes them by this truth and 
the heroism it awoke in him. Men saw the new 
doctrine, and looked back on the old error, — that 
Jove loved Rome, Pallas Athens, Juno Samos and 
Carthage most of all, Jehovah Mount Zion, and 
Baal his Tyrian towns; that each several deity 
looked grim at all the rest of men, and so must 
have his own forms and ceremonies, unwelcome 
to the rest. Men see this is an error now ; they 
see the evil which came thereof, — the wars and 
ages full of strife, national jealousies, wrangling 
betwixt Babylonian or Theban priests, and the 
antagonism of the Gentile and the Jew. Now all are 
£; one in Christ." They bless the lips which taught 
the doctrine and brought them freedom by the 
truth. Meantime the truth uplifts the Apostle ; his 
mind expands, his conscience works more freely 
than before, no longer burdened with a law of 
sin and death. His affections have a wider range, 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



53 



knowing no man after his national flesh. His soul 
has a better prospect of God, now the partition- 
wall between the Jew and Gentile is thrown down. 

We often estimate the value of a nation by the 
truths it brings to light. To take the physical 
census, and know how many shall vote, we count 
the heads, and tell men off by millions, — so many 
square miles of Russians, Tartars, or Chinese. 
But to take the spiritual census, and see what 
will be voted, you count the thoughts, tell off the 
great men, enumerate the truths. The nations may 
perish, the barbarian sweep over Thebes, the lovely 
places of Jerusalem become a standing pool, and 
the favorite spot of Socrates and Aristotle be grown 
up to brambles, — yet Egypt, Judea, Athens, do 
not die ; their truths live on, refusing death, and 
still these names are of a classic land. I do not 
think that God loves the men or the nations He 
visits with this lofty destiny better than He loves 
other ruder tribes or ruder men : but it is by this 
standard that we estimate the nations ; a few truths 
make them immortal. 

A great truth does not disdain to ride on so hum- 
ble a beast as interest. Thus ideas go abroad in 
the ships of the desert, or the ships of the sea. 
Some nations, like the English and others, seem 
to like this equipage the best, and love to handle 
and taste a truth in the most concrete form ; so 
5* 



54 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



great truths are seen and welcomed as political 
economy before they are thought of as part of 
political morality, human affection, and cosmic piety. 
All the great truths of political science seem to have 
been brought to the consciousness of men stimu- 
lated by fear, or by love of the results of the truth, 
not of itself. Nations have sometimes adopted 
their ideal children only for the practical value 
of the dress they wore ; but the great Providence 
of the Father sent the truth as they were able 
to bear it. So earthly mothers sometimes teach 
the alphabet to their children in letters of sugar, 
eaten as soon as learned. 

But even with us it is not always so. In our 
own day we have seen a man possessed with this 
great idea, — that every man has a right to his 
own body and soul, and consequently that it is 
wrong to hold an innocent man in bondage ; that 
no custom, no law, no constitution, no private or 
national interest, can justify the deed; nothing on 
earth, nothing beneath it or above. He applies 
this to American slavery. Here is a conflict be- 
tween an acknowledged truth and what is thought 
a national interest. What an influence did the 
idea have on the man ! It enlarged him, and made 
him powerful, opened the eye of his conscience 
to the hundred-headed injustice in the Lernasan 
Marsh of modern society ; Avidened his affections, 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



55 



till his heart prayed, ay, and his hands, for the 
poor negro in the Southern swamps, — for all the 
oppressed. It touched and wakened up his soul, 
till he felt a manly piety in place of what might 
else have been a puny sentimentalism, mewling 
and whining in the Church's arms. The idea goes 
abroad, sure to conquer. 

See how a great idea, a truth of morals or relig- 
ion, has an influence on masses of men. Some 
single man sees it first, dimly for a long time, 
without sight enough to make it clear, the quality 
of vision better than his quantity of sight. Then 
he sees it clearly and in distinct outline. The truth 
burns mightily within him, and he cannot be still ; 
he tells it, now to one, then to another; at each 
time of telling he gets his lesson better learned. 
Other men see the idea, dimly at first as he. 
It wakens a love for itself; first, perhaps, in the 
recipient heart of some woman, waiting for the 
consolation. Then a few minds prepared for the 
idea half welcome it ; thence it timidly flashes 
into other minds, as light reflected from the water. 
Soon the like-minded meet together to sun them- 
selves in one another's prayers. They form a family 
of the faith, and grow strong in their companion- 
ship. The circle grows wider. Men oppose the 
new idea, with little skill or much, sometimes with 
violence, or only with intellect. Then comes a 



56 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



little pause, — the ablest representatives of the truth 
must get fully conscious of their truth, and of 
their relation to the world ; a process like that in 
the growing corn of summer, which in hot days 
spindles, as the farmers say, but in cool nights 
gets thick, and has a green and stocky growth. 
The interruptions to a great idea are of correspond- 
ing value to its development in a man, or a nation, 
or the world. Our men baptized with a new idea 
pause and reflect to be more sure, — perfecting the 
logic of their thought ; pause and devise their mode 
to set it forth, — perfecting their rhetoric, and seek 
to organize it in an outward form, for every thought 
must be a thing. Then they tell their idea more 
perfectly ; in the controversy that follows, errors 
connected with it get exposed ; all that is merely 
accidental, national, or personal gets shaken off, 
and the pure truth goes forth to conquer. In 
this way all the great ideas of religion, of phi- 
lanthropy, have gone their round. Yet every new 
truth of morals or religion which blesses the world 
conflicts with old notions, binds a new burden 
on the men who first accept it ; demands of 
them to lay aside old comforts, accept a hard 
name, endure the coldness of their friends, and 
feel the iron of the world. What a rough wind 
winnowed the early Christians and the Quakers ! 
They bear all that, and still the truth goes on. 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



57 



Soon it has philosophers to explain it, apologists 
to defend it, orators to set it forth, institutions 
to embody its sacred life. It is a new force in 
the world, and nothing can dislodge or withstand 
it. It was in this way that the ideas of Chris- 
tianity got a footing in the world. Between the 
enthusiasm of Peter and James at the Pentecost, 
and the cool demonstrations of Clarke and Schleier- 
macher, what a world of experience there lay ! 

Some four hundred years ago this truth began 
to be distinctly seen : Man has natural empire 
over all institutions; they are for him, accidents 
of his development, not he for them. That is a 
very simple statement, each of you assents to it. 
But once it was a great new truth. See what it 
has led to. Martin Luther dimly saw its applica- 
tion to the Catholic Church, the institution that 
long had ruled over the souls of men. The Church 
gave way and recoiled before the tide of truth. 
That helpless truth, — see what it has done, what 
millions it has inspired, what institutions it has 
built, what men called into life ! By and by men 
saw its application to the despotic state which long 
had ruled over the bodies and souls of men. Revo- 
lutions followed thick and fast in Holland, Eng- 
land, America, and France, and one day all Europe 
and the world will be ablaze with that idea. Men 
opposed ; one of the Stuarts said, " It shall not 



58 



TRUTH AXD THE INTELLECT. 



cross the four seas of England;" but it crossed 
the Stuart's neck, and drove his children from the 
faithful soil. It came to America, that idea so 
destructive at first, destined to be so creative and 
conservative. It brought our fathers here, grim 
and bearded men, full of the fear of God ; they 
little knew what fruit would come of their planting. 
See the institutions which have sprung up on the 
soil then cumbered by a wilderness, and hideous 
with wild beasts and wilder men. See what new 
ideas blossomed out of the old truth : All men have 
natural, equal, and unalienable rights to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness; — that was a new 
flower from the old stem. See the one-and-thirty 
States which have sprung up under the shadow 
of this great idea. 

That truth long since recognized as true, now 
proved expedient by experiment, goes back over 
the sea, following the track the Mayflower broke, 
and earnest nations welcome it to their bosom, 
that sovereign truth : Man is supreme over institu- 
tions, not they over him. How it has thundered 
and lightened over Europe in the last few years! 
It will beat to the dust many a godless throne, and 
the palm of peace shall occupy the ground once 
reserved for soldiers' feet; here and there a city 
ditch of defence has already become a garden for 
the town. 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



59 



Here in America, men full of this truth rise up 
against ungodly customers, now become a law, and 
under this demand the freedom of the slave. See 
how it spreads! It cannot be written down, nor 
voted down, nor sneered and frowned down ; it 
cannot be put down by all the armies of the world. 
This truth belongs to the nature of man, and can 
only perish when the race gives up the ghost. 
Yet it is nothing but an idea; it has no hands, 
no feet. The man who first set it agoing on the 
earth, — see what he has done ! Yet I doubt 
not the villagers around him thought the ale-house 
keeper was the more useful man; and when beer 
fell a penny in the pot, or the priest put on a new 
cassock, many a man thought it was a more im- 
portant event than the first announcement of this 
truth to men. But is not the wise man stronger 
than all the foolish ? Truth is a part of the celes- 
tial machinery of God; whoso puts that in gear 
for mankind has the Almighty to turn his wheel. 
When God turns the mill, who shall stop it ? 
There is a spark from the good God in us all. 

" 0? j°y that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive 

Methinks I see some thoughtful man, studious 
of truth, his intellectual piety writ on his tall pale 



60 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



brow, coming from the street, the field, or shop, 
pause and turn inward all his strength ; now he 
smiles as he gets glimpses of this bashful truth, 
which flies, yet wishes to be seen, — a daughter of 
the all-blessed God. It is at her beauty that he 
smiles, the thought of kindred loveliness, she is to 
people earth withal. And then the smile departs, 
and a pale sadness settles down upon his radiant 
face, as he remembers that men water their gardens 
for each new plant with blood, and how much 
must be shed to set a truth like this! He shows 
his thought to other men ; they keep it nestled 
in the family awhile. In due time the truth 
has come of age, and must take possessipn of the 
estate. Now she wrestles with the Roman Church; 
the contest is not over yet, but the deadly wound 
will never heal. Now she wrestles with the North- 
ern kings ; see how they fall, their sceptres broken, 
their thrones overturned ; and the fair-faced daughter 
of the Eternal King leads forward happy tribes of 
men, and with pious vow inaugurates the chiefs 
of peace, of justice, and of love, and on the one 
great gospel of the human heart swears them to 
keep the constitution of the universe, written by 
God's own hand. 

But this last is only prophecy ; men say, " It can- 
not be ; the slaves of America must be bondmen 
for ever ; the nations of Europe can never be free/' 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



61 



I laugh at such a word. Let me know a thing is 
true, I know it has the omnipotence of God on 
its side, and fear no more for it than I fear for 
God. Politics is the science of exigencies. The 
eternal truth of things is the exigency which controls 
the science of men as the science of matter. Depend 
upon it, the Infinite God is one of the exigencies 
not likely to be disregarded in the ultimate events of 
human development. Truth shall fail out of geom- 
etry and politics at the same time ; only we learn 
first the simpler forms of truth. Now folly, passion, 
and fancied interest pervert the eye, which cannot 
always fail to see. 

Truth is the object of the intellect; by human 
wisdom we learn the thought of God, and are 
inspired by his mind, — not all of us with the same 
mode, or form, or quantity of truth ; but each 
shall have his own, proportionate to his native 
powers and to the use he makes thereof. Love 
of truth is the intellectual part of piety. Wisdom 
is needful to complete and manly religion ; a thing 
to be valued for itself, not barely for its use. Love 
of the use will one day give place to love of truth 
itself. 

To keep the body's law brings health and strength, 
and in long ages brings beauty too; to keep the 
laws of mind brings in the higher intellectual health 

6 



62 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



and strength and loveliness, as much nobler than 
all corporeal qualities as the mind is nobler than 
the muscles it controls. Truth will follow from 
the lawful labor of the mind, and serve the great 
interest of men. Many a thousand years hence, 
when we are forgotten, when both the Englands 
have perished out of time, and the Anglo-Saxon 
race is only known as the Cherethites and Peleth- 
ites, — nothing national left but the name, — the 
truths we have slowly learned will be added to 
the people that come after us; the great political 
truth of America will go round the world, and 
clothe the earth with greenness and with beauty. 
All the power of mind that we mature and give 
examples of shall also survive; in you and me 
it will be personally immortal, — a portion of our 
ever-widening consciousness, though all the earthly 
wisdom of Leibnitz or Aristotle must soon become 
a single drop in the heavenly ocean of the sages 
whom death has taught; but it will be not less 
enduring on the earth, humanly immortal; for the 
truths you bring to light are dropped into the world's 
wide treasury, — where Socrates and Kant have cast 
in but two mites, which made only a farthing in the 
wealth of man, — and form a part of the heritage 
which each generation receives, enlarges, holds in 
trust, and of necessity bequeathes to mankind, the 
personal estate of man entailed of nature to the 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



63 



end of time. As the men who discovered corn, 
tamed the ox, the horse, invented language and 
letters, who conquered fire and water, and yoked 
these two brute furious elements with an iron 
bond, as gentle now as any lamb, — as they who 
tamed the lightning, sending it of their errands, 
and as they who sculptured loveliness in stone 
two thousand years ago, a thing of beauty and 
a joy for ever, — as these and all such transmit 
their wealthy works to man, so he who sets forth a 
truth and develops wisdom, any human excellence 
of gift or growth, greatens the spiritual glory of 
his race. And a single man, who could not make 
one hair white or black, has added a cubit to the 
stature of mankind. 

All the material riches inherited or actively 
acquired by this generation, our cultivated land, our 
houses, roads of earth, of wood, of iron, our facto- 
ries an(i ships, — mechanical inventions which make 
New England more powerful than Russia to create, 
though she have forty-fold our men, ■ — all these 
contrivances, the crown-jewels of the human race, 
the symbols of our kingly power over the earth, 
we leave to the next age ; your children's burden 
will be lighter, their existence larger, and their joy 
more delightful, for our additions to this heritage. 
But the spiritual truths we learn, the intellectual 
piety which we acquire, all the manly excellence 



64 



TRUTH AXD THE INTELLECT. 



that we slowly meditate and slowly sculpture into 
life, goes down in blessing to mankind, the cup 
of gold hid in the sack of those who only asked 
for corn, richer than all the grain they bought. 
Into our spiritual labors other men shall enter, 
climb by our ladder, then build anew, and so go 
higher up towards heaven than you or I had time 
and power to go. There is a spiritual solidarity of 
the human race, and the thought of the first man 
will help the wisdom of the last. A thousand gen- 
erations live in you and me. 

It is an old world, mankind is no new creation, 
no upstart of to-day, but has lived through hard 
times and long. Yet what is the history of man 
to the nature that is in us all! The instinctive 
hunger for perfect knowledge will not be contented 
with repetitions of the remembered feast. There 
are new truths to come, — truths in science, morals, 
politics, religion; some have arrived not lo$ig ago 
upon this planet, — many a new thing underneath 
the sun. At first men give them doubtful welcome. 
But if you know that they are truths, fear not ; 
be sure that they will stay, adding new treasures 
to the consciousness of men, new outward wel- 
fare to the blessedness of earth. No king nor 
conqueror does men so great a good as he who 
adds to human kind a great and universal truth; 
he that aids its march, and makes the thought a 



TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT. 



65 



thing, works in the same line with Moses, has 
intellectual sympathy with God, and is a fellow- 
laborer with Him. The best gift we can bestow 
upon man is manhood. Undervalue not material 
things; but remember that the generation which, 
finding Rome brick, left it marble and full of 
statues and temples too, as its best achievement 
bequeathed to us a few words from a young Car- 
penter of Galilee, and the remembrance of his manly 
life. 



6* 



III. 



OF JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



turn and do justice. — Tobit xiii. 6. 

Everywhere in the world there is a natural law, 
that is a constant mode of action, which seems 
to belong to the nature of things, to the consti- 
tution of the universe : this fact is universal. In 
different departments we call this mode of action 
by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of 
Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean 
thereby a certain mode of action which belongs to 
the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in 
which commonly they are seen to act, and in which 
it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of 
matter we only know from the fact that they are 
always obeyed ; to us the actual obedience is the 
only witness of the ideal rule, for in respect to the 
conduct of the material world the ideal and the 
actual are the same. 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



67 



The laws of matter we can learn only by observa- 
tion and experience. We cannot divine them and 
anticipate, or know them at all, unless experience 
supply the facts of observation. Before experience 
of the fact, no man could foretell that a falling 
body would descend sixteen feet the first second, 
twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen 
times the fourth. The law of falling bodies is 
purely objective to us ; no mode of action in our 
consciousness anticipates this rule of action in the 
outer world. The same is true of all the laws 
of matter, The ideal law is known because it 
is a fact. The law is imperative ; it must be 
obeyed, without hesitation. In the solar system, 
or the composition of a diamond, no margin is left 
for any oscillation of disobedience; margins of oscil- 
lation there always are, but only for vibration as a 
function, not as the refusal of a function. Only the 
primal will of God works in the material world, no 
secondary finite will. 

In Nature, the world spread out before the 
senses, — to group many specific modes of action 
about a single generic force, — we see there is the 
great general law of Attraction, which binds atom 
to atom in a grain of sand, orb to orb, system to 
system, gives unity to the world of things, and 
rounds these worlds of systems to a universe. At 
first there seem to be exceptions to this law, — as in 



68 



JUSTICE AXD THE CONSCIENCE. 



growth and decomposition, in the repulsions of 
electricity ; but at length all these are found to be 
instantial cases of this gTeat law of attraction 
acting in various modes. We name the attraction 
by its several modes, — cohesion in small masses, 
and gravitation in large. When the relation seems 
a little more intimate, we call it affinity, as in the 
atomic union of molecules of matter. Other modes 
we name electricity, and magnetism ; when the 
relation is yet more close and intimate, we call it 
vegetation in plants, vitality in animals. But for 
the present purpose all these may be classed under 
the general term Attraction, considered as acting 
in various modes of cohesion, gravitation, affinity, 
vegetation, and vitality. 

This power gives unity to the material world, 
keeps it whole ; yet, acting under such various 
forms, gives variety at the same time. The variety 
of effect surprises the senses at first; but in the 
end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated 
mind. Looked at in reference to this globe, an 
earthquake is no more than a chink that opens 
in a garden-walk, of a dry day in summer. A 
sponge is porous, having small spaces between the 
solid parts; the solar system is only more porous, 
having larger room between the several orbs ; the 
universe yet more so, with vast spaces between 
the systems ; a similar attraction keeps together 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



69 



the sponge, the system, and the universe. Every 
particle of matter in the world is related to each 
and all the other particles thereof ; attraction is the 
common bond. 

In the spiritual world, the world of human con- 
sciousness, there is also a law, an ideal mode of 
action for the spiritual forces of man. To take 
only the moral part of this sphere of consciousness, 
we find the phenomenon called Justice, the law of 
right. Viewed as a force, it bears the same rela- 
tion in the world of conscience, that attraction 
bears in the world of sense. I « mean justice is 
the normal relation of men, and has the same to 
do amongst moral atoms, — individual men, — 
moral masses, — that is, nations, — and the moral 
whole, — I mean all mankind, — which attraction 
has to do with material atoms, masses, and the 
material whole. It appears in a variety of forms 
not less striking. 

However, unlike attraction, it does not work 
free from all hinderance; it develops itself through 
conscious agents, that continually change, and 
pass by experiment from low to high degrees of 
life and development, to higher forms of justice. 
There is a certain private force, personal and pecu- 
liar to each one of us, controlled by individual 
will; this may act in the same line with the great 
normal force of justice, or it rriay conflict for a 



70 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



time with the general law of the universe, having 
private nutations, oscillations, and aberrations, per- 
sonal or national. But these minor forces, after a 
while, are sure to be overcome by the great general 
moral force, pass into the current, and be borne 
along in the moral stream of the universe. 

What a variety of men and women in the world ! 
Two hundred million persons, and no two alike 
in form and lineament ! in character and being 
how unlike ! how very different as phenomena and 
facts ! What an immense variety of wish, of will, 
in these thousand million men! of plans, which 
now rise up in the little personal bubble that 
we call a reputation or a great fortune, then in 
the great national bubble which we call a State! 
for bubbles they are, judging by the space and 
time they occupy in this great and age-outlast- 
ing sea of human kind. But underneath all 
these bubbles, great and little, resides the same 
eternal force which they shape into this or the 
other special form; and over all the same pater- 
nal Providence presides, and keeps eternal watch 
above the little and the great, producing variety 
of effect from unity of force. This Providence 
allow r s the little bubbles of his child's caprice, 
humors him in forming them, gives him time and 
space for that, understands his little caprices and 
his whims, and lets him carry them out awhile ; 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



71 



but Himself, with no whim and no caprice, rules 
there as universal justice, omniscient and all-pow- 
erful. Oat of His sea these bubbles rise; by His 
force they rise ; by His law they have their con- 
sistence, and the private personal will, which gives 
them size or littleness and normal or abnormal 
shape, has its limitation of error marked out for 
it which cannot be passed by. In this human 
world there is a wide margin for oscillation ; refusal 
to perform the ideal function has been provided 
for, redundance made to balance deficiency ; checks 
are provided for every form of abnormal action of 
the will. 

Viewed as an object not in man, justice is the 
constitution or fundamental law of the moral uni- 
verse, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man 
in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human 
affairs must be subject to that as the law para- 
mount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, 
what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohe- 
sions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, 
must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation 
towards the eternal right. 

We learn the laws of matter, that of attraction, 
for example, by observation and reflection; what 
we know thereof is the result of long experience, 
— the experienced sight and the experienced thought 



72 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



of many a thousand years. We might learn 
something of the moral law of justice, the law 
of right, in the same way, as a merely external 
thing. Then we should know it as a phenomenon, 
as we know attraction ; as a fact so general, 
that we called it universal and a law of nature. 
Still it would be deemed only an arbitrary law, 
over us, indeed, but not in us, — or in our ele- 
ments, not our consciousness, — which we must be 
subordinate to, but could not become coordinate 
with; a law like that of falling bodies, which had 
no natural relation with us, which we could not 
anticipate or divine by our nature, but only learn 
by our history. We should not know why God 
had made the world after the pattern of justice, 
and not injustice, any more than we now know 
why a body does not fall as rapidly the first as the 
last second of its descent. 

But God has given us a moral faculty, the con- 
science, which is able to perceive this law directly 
and immediately, by intuitive perception thereof, 
without experience of the external consequences of 
keeping or violating it, and more perfectly than 
such experience can ever disclose it. For the facts 
of man's history do not fully represent the faculties 
of his nature as the history of matter represents 
the qualities of matter. Man, though finite, is 
indefinitely progressive, continually unfolding the 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 73 

qualities of his nature ; his history, therefore, is 
not the whole book of man, but only the portion 
thereof which has been opened and publicly read. 
So the history of man never completely represents 
his nature ; and a law derived merely from the facts 
of observation by no means describes the normal 
rule of action which belongs to his nature.* The 
laws of matter are known to us because they are 
kept ; there the ideal and actual are the same ; but 
man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher 
than what he has come up to, — an ideal of nature 
which shames his actual of history. Observation 
and reflection only give us the actual of morals ; 
conscience, by gradual and successive intuition, 
presents us the ideal of morals. On condition that 
I use this faculty in its normal activity, and in 
proportion as I develop it and all its kindred 
powers, I learn justice, the law of right, the divine 
rule of conduct for human life ; I see it, not as an 
external fact which might as well not be at all as 
be, or might have been supplanted by its opposite, 
but I see it as a mode of action which belongs to 
the infinitely perfect nature of God; belongs also 
to my own nature, and so is not barely over me, 
but in me, of me, and for me. I can become co- 
ordinate with that, and not merely subordinate 
thereto ; I find a deep, permanent, and instinctive 
delight in justice, not only in the outward effects, 

7 



74 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



but in the inward cause, and by my nature I love 
this law of right, this rule of conduct, this justice, 
with a deep and abiding love. I find that justice is 
the object of my conscience, fitting that as light the 
eye and truth the mind. There is a perfect agree- 
ment between the moral object and the moral sub- 
ject, binding it fit me thus, I know that justice 
will work my welfare and that of all mankind. 

Attraction is the most general law in the mate- 
rial world, and prevents a schism in the universe ; 
temperance is the law of the body, and prevents 
a schism in the members ; justice is the law of 
conscience, and prevents a schism in the moral 
world, amongst individuals in a family, communi- 
ties in a State, or nations in the world of men. 
Temperance is corporeal justice, the doing right to 
each limb of the body, and is the mean propor- 
tional between appetite and appetite, or one and all ; 
sacrificing no majority to one desire, however great, 
— no minority, however little, to a majority, — 
but giving each its due, and to all the harmonious 
and well-proportioned symmetry that is meet for 
all. It keeps the proportions betwixt this and that, 
and holds an even balance within the body, so 
that there shall be no excess. Justice is moral tem- 
perance in the world of men. It keeps just rela- 
tions between men ; one man, however little, must 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



75 



not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a 
majority, or to all men. It holds the balance be- 
twixt nation and nation, for a nation is bnt a larger 
man ; betwixt a man and his family, tribe, nation, 
race ; between mankind and God. It is the uni- 
versal regulator which coordinates man with man, 
each with all, — me with the ten hundred millions 
of men, so that my absolute rights and theirs do 
not interfere, nor our ultimate interests ever clash, 
nor my eternal welfare prove antagonistic to the 
blessedness of all or any one. I am to do justice, 
and demand that of all, — a universal human debt, 
a universal human claim. 

But it extends further; it is the regulator be- 
tween men and God. It is the moral spontaneous- 
ness of the Infinite God, as it is to be the moral 
volition of finite men. The right to the justice of 
God is unalienable in men, the universal human 
claim, the never-ending gift for them. Can God 
ever depart from his own justice, deprive any crea- 
ture of a right, or balk it of a natural claim ? Phi- 
losophically speaking, it is impossible, — a contra- 
diction to our idea of God ; religiously speaking, it 
is impious, — a contradiction to our feeling of God. 
Both the philosophic and the religious consciousness 
declare it impossible that God should be unjust. 
The nature of finite men claims justice of God ; 
His infinite nature adjusts the claim. Every man 



76 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



in the world is morally related to each and all the 
rest. Justice is the common human bond. It joins 
us also to the infinite God. Justice is his constant 
mode of action in the moral world. 

So much for justice, viewed as objective ; as a 
law of the universe, the mode of action of the uni- 
versal moral force. 

Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as 
the natural object of his conscience. As the mind 
loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the 
right; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties. 
Conscience rests in justice as an end, as the mind in 
truth. As truth is the side of God turned towards 
the intellect, so is justice the side of Him which 
conscience looks upon. Love of justice is the moral 
part of piety. 

When I am a baby, in my undeveloped moral 
state, I do not love justice, nor conform to it; when 
I am sick, and have not complete control over this 
republic of nerves and muscles, I fail of justice, and 
heed it not ; when I am stung with beastly rage, 
blinded by passion, or over attracted from my proper 
sphere of affection, another man briefly possessing 
me, I may not love the absolute and eternal right, 
private capillary attraction conflicting with the uni- 
versal gravitation. But in my maturity, in my cool 
and personal hours, when I am most myself, and 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 77 



the accidents of my bodily temperament and local 
surroundings are controlled by the substance of my 
manhood, then I love justice with a firm, unwaver- 
ing love. That is the natural fealty of my con- 
science to its liege-lord. Then I love justice, not for 
its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for 
the moral truth and loveliness thereof. Then if 
justice crown me I am glad, not merely with my 
persona] feeling, because it is I who wear the crown, 
but because it is the crown of justice. If justice 
discrown and bind me down to infamy, I still am 
glad with all my moral sense, and joy in the univer- 
sal justice, though I suffer with the private smart. 
Though all that is merely selfish and personal of me 
revolts, still what is noblest, what I hold in common 
with mankind and in common with God, bids me 
be glad if justice is done upon me ; to me or upon 
me, I know it is justice still, and though my private 
injustice be my foe, the justice of the universe is 
still my friend. God, acting in this universal mode 
of moral force, acts for me, and the prospect of 
future suffering has no terror. 

Men reverence and love justice. Conscience is 
loyal ; moral piety begins early, the ethical instinct 
prompting mankind, and in savage ages bringing 
out the lovely flower in some woman's character, 
where moral beauty has its earliest spring. Com- 
monly, men love justice a little more than truth ; 



78 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



they are more moral than intellectual; have ideas 
of the conscience more than of the mind. This is 
not true of the more cultivated classes in any 
civilization, but of the mass of men in all; their 
morals are better than their philosophy. They see 
more absolute truth with the moral than with the 
intellectual faculty. The instinct for the abstract 
just of will is always a little before the instinct for 
the abstract true of thought. This is the normal 
order of development. But in the artificial forms 
of culture, what is selfish and for one takes rank 
before what is human and for all. So cultivated 
men commonly seek large intellectual power, as 
an instrument for their selfish purposes, and neg- 
lect and even hate to get a large moral power, the 
instrument of universal benevolence. They love 
the exclusive use of certain forms of truth, and 
neglect justice, which would make the convenience 
of every truth serve the common good of all. Men 
with large moral power must needs work for all ; 
with merely large intellectual power they may work 
only for themselves. Hence crafty aristocracies 
and monopolists seek for intellectual culture as 
a mode of power, and shun moral culture, which 
can never serve a selfish end. This rule holds good 
of all the great forms of civilization, from the 
Egyptian to the British ; of all the higher semina- 
ries of education, from the Propaganda of the 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



79 



Jesuits to a New England college. In all the civil- 
ized nations at this day, the controlling class is 
intellectual more than moral; has more power of 
thought than power of righteousness. The same 
fact appears in the literature of the world. The 
foremost class in culture, wealth, and social rank 
have less than the average proportion of morality. 
Hence comes the character of laws, political, social, 
and ecclesiastical institutions, — not designed for all, 
but for a few, at best a part, because the makers did 
not start with adequate moral power, nor propose 
justice as an end. 

Yet the mass of men are always looking for the 
just ; all this vast machinery which makes up a 
State, a world of States, is, on the part of the peo- 
ple, an attempt to organize justice; the minute 
and wide-extending civil machinery which makes 
up the law and the courts, with all their officers 
and implements, on the part of mankind, is chiefly 
an effort to reduce to practice the theory of right. 
Alas ! with the leaders of civil and political affairs 
it is quite different, often an organization of self- 
ishness. Mankind reaches out after the absolute 
right, makes its constitutions to establish justice, 
and provide for the common defence. We report 
the decisions of wise men, and of courts ; we keep 
the record of cases decided, to help us judge more 
wisely in time to come. The nation would enact 



80 



JUSTICE AND THE 



CONSCIENCE. 



laws : it aims to get the justest men in the State, 
that they may incorporate their aggregate sense of 
right into a statute. We set twelve honest men to 
try an alleged offender ; they are to apply their joint 
justice to the special case. The people wish law to 
be embodied justice, administered without passion. 
I know the government seldom desires this ; the peo- 
ple as seldom fail of the wish. Yet the mass of 
men commonly attribute their own moral aims to 
every great leader. Did they know the actual self- 
ishness and injustice of their rulers, not a govern- 
ment would stand a year. The world would 
ferment with universal revolution. 

In savage times, duelling and private revenge 
grew out of this love of justice. They were rude 
efforts after the right. In its name a man slew his 
father's murderer, or, failing thereof, left the rever- 
sion of his vengeance as a trust in the hands of his 
own son, to be paid to the offender or his heir. 
With the Norsemen it was deemed a crime against 
society to forgive a grievous wrong, and " nidding " 
is a word of contempt to this day. It was not 
merely personal malice which led to private revenge • 
which bade the Scottish mother train up one son 
after another filled with a theological hatred against 
their father's murderer; not a private and selfish 
lust of vengeance alone which sustained her after 
the eldest and then the next of age perished in the 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



81 



attempt, and filled her with a horrid joy when 
the third succeeded. It was " wild justice " in a 
wild age, but always mixed with passion, and 
administered in hate; private vengeance edged the 
axe with which wild justice struck the blow. Even 
now, in the ruder portions of America, South and 
"West, where the common law is silent, and of 
statutes there are none, or none enforced, when a 
wrong is done, the offended people come forth and 
hold their court, with summary process, brief and 
savage, to decree something like justice in a brutal 
way; rage furnishing the occasion, conscience is 
still the cause. 

All these things indicate a profound love of jus- 
tice inherent in mankind. It takes a rude form 
with rude men, is mixed with passion, private hate ; 
in a civilized community it takes a better form, 
and attempts are made to remove all personal 
malice from the representatives of right. A few 
years ago men were surprised to see the people of 
a neighboring city for the first time choose their 
judges : common elections had been carried there 
by uncommon party tricks ; but when this grave 
matter came before the people, they laid off their 
party badges, and as men chose the best officers for 
that distinguished trust. 

The people are not satisfied with any form of 
government, or statute law, until it comes up to 



82 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



their sense of justice ; so every progressive State 
revises its statutes from time to time, and at each 
revision comes nearer to the absolute right which 
human nature demands. Mankind, always pro- 
gressive, revolutionizes constitutions, changes and 
changes, seeking to come close to the ideal jus- 
tice, the divine and immutable law of the world, 
to which we all owe fealty, swear how we will. 

In literature men always look for poetical justice, 
desiring that virtue should have its own reward, 
and vice appropriate punishment, not always out- 
ward, but always real, and made known to the 
reader. All students of English history rejoice at 
the downfall of Jud^e Jeffries. In romances we 
love to read of some man or maid oppressed by 
outward circumstances, but victorious over them ; 
hawked at by villains whose foot is taken in their 
own snare. This is the principal charm in the bal- 
lads and people's poetry ' of England and Ger- 
many, and in the legends of Catholic countries. 
All men sympathize in the fate of Blue Beard, 
and "the guardian uncle fierce." The world has 
ready sympathy with the Homeric tale of Ulysses 
returning to his Penelope, long faithful, but not 
grown old with baffling the suitors for twenty 
years. It is his justice and humanity which give 
such a wide audience to the most popular novelist 
of our day. But when a writer tries to paint vice 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



83 



beautiful, make sin triumphant, men shrink away 
from the poison atmosphere he breathes. Authors 
like Filmer, Machiavel, and Hobbes arouse the in- 
dignation of mankind. The fact of personal error 
it is easy to excuse, but mankind does not forgive 
such as teach the theory of sin. We always honor 
men who forget their immediate personal interests, 
and use an author's sacred function to bear witness 
to the right. 

The majority of men who think have an ideal 
justice better than the things about them, juster 
than the law. Some paint it behind them, on the 
crumbling walls of history, and tell us of " the 
good old times ; " others paint it before them, on 
the morning mist of youthful life, and in their 
prayers and their daily toil strive after this, — their 
New Jerusalem. We all of us have some ideal ; 
our dream is fairer than our day ; we will not let it 
go. If the wicked prosper, it is but for a moment, 
say we ; the counsel of the froward shall be carried 
headlong. What an ideal democracy now floats 
before the eyes of earnest and religious men, — fairer 
than the " Republic " of Plato, or More's " Utopia," 
or the " golden age " of fabled memory ! It is 
justice that we want to organize, — justice for all, 
for rich and poor There the slave shall be free 
from his master. There shall be no want, no 
oppression, no fear of man, no fear of God, but 



84 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



only love. " There is a good time coming," — so 
we all believe when we are young and full of life 
and healthy hope. 

God has made man with the instinctive love of 
justice in him, which gradually gets developed in 
the world. But in Himself justice is infinite. This 
justice of God must appear in the world, and in the 
history of men ; and, after all " the wrongs that 
patient merit of the unworthy takes," still you see 
that the ploughshare of justice is drawn through 
and through the field of the world, uprooting the 
savage plants. The proverbs of the nations tell us 
this : " The mills of the gods grind slow, but they 
grind to powder ; " " 111 got ill spent ; " " The 
triumphing of the wicked is but for a moment ; " 
" What the Devil gives, he also takes ; " " Honesty 
is the best policy ; " " No butter will stick to a bad 
man's bread." Sometimes these sayings come from 
the instinct of justice in man, and have a little ethical 
exaggeration about them, but yet more often they 
represent the world's experience of facts more than 
its consciousness of ideas. 

Look at the facts of the world. You see a con- 
tinual and progressive triumph of the right. I do 
not pretend to understand the moral universe ; the 
arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways ; 
I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



85 



by the experience of sight ; I can divine it by con- 
science. And from what I see I am sure it bends 
towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged 
long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery 
and remembered that God is just. Erelong all 
America will tremble. The Stuarts in England 
were tyrannical and strong: respectable and peace- 
ful men kept still a while, and bore the tyranny ; 
but men who loved God and his justice more than 
house and land fled to the wilderness, and built up 
a troublesome commonwealth of Puritans. Such 
as stayed at home endeavored for a while to submit 
to the wrong; some of them made theories to justify 
it. But it could not be ; the tyranny became unbear- 
able even to barons and bishops ; one tyrant loses 
his head, another his crown ; no Stuart must tread 
again the English soil; legitimacy becomes a pre- 
tender. 

England would rule America, not for our good, 
but hers alone. We forgot the love wdiich bound 
the two people into one family; the obstinate in- 
justice of the mother weakened the ties of language, 
literature, religion, — the Old England and the New 
read the same Bible, — kindred blood and institu- 
tions inherited from the same fathers ; we thought 
only of the injustice ; and there was an ocean be- 
tween us and the mother country. The fairest 
jewel fell from the British crown. 

8 



86 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



In France, kings, nobles, clergy, trod the people 
down. Men bore it with the slow, sad patience of 
humanity, bore it out of regard for the " divinity 
that doth hedge a king," for the nobility of the 
noble, and the reverence of the priest. But in a 
few years outraged humanity forgot its slow, sad 
patience, and tore away this triple torment, — as 
Paul, escaped from wreck, shook off the viper from 
his hand, — and trod the venomous beast to dust. 
Napoleon came, king of the people. Justice was 
his word, his action for a while. The nation gath- 
ered about him, gave him their treasure and their 
trust. He was strong through the people's faith ; his 
foes fell before him ; ancient thrones tottered and 
reeled, and came heavy to the ground. The name 
of justice, of the rights of man, shook down their 
thrones, and organized victory at every step. But 
he grows giddy with his height ; selfishness takes 
the place of justice in his counsels ; a bastard giant 
sits on the throne whence the people had hurled off 
" legitimate " oppression ; he fights no more the 
battles of mankind ; justice is exiled from his upstart 
court. The people fall away ; victory perches no 
more on his banner. The snows of Russia cut off 
his army, but it was his own injustice that brought 
Napoleon to the ground. Self-shorn of this great 
strength, the ablest monarch since Charlemagne sits 
down on a little island in the tropic sea, and dies 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



87 



upon that lonely rock, his life a warning, to bid man- 
kind be just and not despise the Lord. No mighti- 
ness of genius could save him, cut off from the 
moral force of the human race. Can any tyrant 
prosper where such a master fell ? 

Look at the condition of Christendom at this 
day; what tyrant sits secure? Revolution is the 
Lynch-law of nations ; it creates an anarchy, and 
then organizes its provisional government of mo- 
mentary despotism. It is a bloody process, but jus- 
tice does not disdain a rugged road ; the Desire of 
all nations comes not always on an ass's colt. All 
Europe is, just now, in a great ferment; terrible 
questions are getting ready for a swift tribunal. 
Injustice cannot stand. No armies, no " Holy Al- 
liance," can hold it up. Human nature is against 
it ; and so is the nature of God ! " Justice has feet 
of wool," no man hears her step, "but her hands are 
of iron," and where she lays them down, only God 
can uplift and unclasp. It is vain to trust in wrong : 
As much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of 
human history. 

I know men complain that sentence against an 
evil work is not presently executed. They see but 
half; it is executed, and with speed ; every depart- 
ure from justice is attended with loss to the unjust 
man, but the loss is not reported to the public. 



88 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



Sometimes a man is honored as a brave, good man, 
but trial rings him and he gives an empty, hollow 
sound. All the ancient and honorable may bid the 
people trust that man, — they turn off their affec- 
tions from him. 

So have I seen an able man, witty and cunning, 
graceful, plausible, elegant, and rich ; men honored 
him for a time, tickled by his beauty to eye and 
ear. But gradually the mean soul of the man ap- 
peared in his conduct, selfish, grasping, inhuman, 
and fraudulently unjust. The public heart forgot 
him, and when he came to die, the town which once 
had honored him so much gave him only earth to rest 
his coffin on. He had the official praises which he 
paid for, that was all. Silence is a figure of speech, 
unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe. 

How differently do men honor such as stood up 
for truth and right, and never shrank ! What monu- 
ments the world builds to its patriots ! Four great 
statesmen, organizers of the right, embalmed in 
stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France as 
they pass to their hall of legislation, silent orators 
to tell how nations love the just. What a monu- 
ment Washington has built in the heart of America 
and all the world ! not by great genius, — he had 
none of that, — but by his effort to be just. The 
martyrs of Christendom, of Judaism, and of every 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



89 



form of heathen faith, — how men worship those 
firm souls who shook off their body sooner than be 
false to conscience. 

Yet eminent justice is often misunderstood. Lit- 
tleness has its compensation. A small man is sel- 
dom pinched for want of room. Greatness is its 
own torment. There was once a man on this earth 
whom the world could not understand. He was too 
high for them, too wide, was every way too great. 
He came, the greatest moral genius of our history, 
to bless mankind. Men mocked him, gave him a 
gallows between two thieves. " Saviour, save thy- 
self," said they, as they shot out the lip at him. 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do!" was the manly answer to the brutal taunt. 
Now see how the world avenges its conscience on 
itself for this injustice : for sixteen hundred years 
men worship him as God throughout the Western 
World. His name goes like the morning sun around 
the earth, like that to waken beauty into life. This 
conscience of ours is loyal ; only let us see the man 
and know that he is King of Righteousness, and we 
will do him homage all our days. 

But we do not see that justice is always done 
on earth ; many a knave is rich, sleek, and honored, 
while the just man is poor, hated, and in torment. 
The Silesian merchant fattens on the weavers' tears, 
and eats their children's bones. Three million slaves 
8* 



90 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



earn the enjoyment of Americans, who curse them 
in the name of Christ ; in the North, capital is a 
tyrant over labor. How sad is the condition of the 
peasantry of Christendom ! The cry of a world of 
suffering, from mythic Abel to the actual slaves of 
America, comes up to our ear, and the instinct of 
justice paints a world beyond the grave, where exact 
justice shall be done to all and each, to Abel and to 
Cain. The moral instinct, not satisfied on earth, 
reaches out to the future world, and in an ideal 
heaven would realize ideal justice. But even there 
the tyranny of able-minded men has interfered, 
painting immortality in such guise that it would be 
a curse to mankind. Yet the instinct of justice 
prevails above it all, and few men fear to meet the 
eternal Mother of us all in heaven. 

We need a great and conscious development of 
the moral element in man, and a corresponding ex- 
pansion of justice in human affairs; an intentional 
application thereof to individual, domestic, social, 
ecclesiastical, and political life. In the old military 
civilization that was not possible ; in the present 
industrial civilization it is not thought desirable 
by the mercantile chiefs of church and State. Hith- 
erto, the actual function of government, so far as 
it has been controlled by the will of the rulers, 
has commonly been this : To foster the strong at 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



91 



the expense of the weak, to protect the capitalist 
and tax the laborer. The powerful have sought a 
monopoly of development and enjoyment, loving 
to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly, little respect 
is paid to absolute justice by the controlling states- 
men of the Christian world. Not conscience and 
the right is appealed to, but prudence and the 
expedient for to-day. Justice is forgotten in look- 
ing at interest, and political morality neglected for 
political economy ; instead of national organization 
of the ideal right, we have only national house- 
keeping. Hence come the great evils of civiliza- 
tion at this day, and the questions of humanity, 
so long adjourned and put off, that it seems they 
can only be settled with bloodshed. Nothing rests 
secure save in the law of God. The thrones of 
Christian Europe tremble ; a little touch and they 
fall. Capitalists are alarmed, lest gold ill got 
should find an equilibrium. Behind the question 
of royalty, nobility, slavery, — relics of the old feu- 
dalism, — there are other questions yet more radi- 
cal, soon to be asked and answered. 

There has been a foolish neglect of moral cul- 
ture throughout all Christendom. The leading 
classes have not valued it ; with them the mind 
was thought better than the moral sense, and con- 
science a dowdy. It is so in the higher education 
of New England, as of Europe. These men seek 



92 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



the uses of truth, not truth itself; they scorn duty 
and its higher law ; to be ignorant and weak- 
minded is thought worse than to be voluntarily 
unjust and wicked; idiocy of conscience is often 
thought an excellence, is never out of fashion. 
Morality is thought no part of piety in the Church, 
it " saves " no man ; " belief" does that with the 
Protestants, "sacraments" with the Catholics; it is 
no part of politics in the State, — not needed to save 
the nation or the soul. 

Of late years there has been a great expansion 
of intellectual development in Europe and America. 
Has the moral development kept pace with it? Is 
the desire to apply justice to its universal function 
as common and intense with the more intellectual 
classes, as the desire to apply special truths to their 
function ? By no means. We have organized our 
schemes of intellectual culture : it is the function 
of schools, colleges, learned societies, and all the 
special institutions for agriculture, manufactures, 
and commerce, to develop the understanding and 
apply it to various concrete interests. No analogous 
pains have been taken with the culture of con- 
science. France has the only academy for moral 
science in the Christian world! We have statistical 
societies for interest, no moral societies for justice. 
We rely only on the moral instinct; its develop- 
ment is accidental, not a considerable part of our 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



93 



plan ; or else is involuntary, no part of the will of 
the most intellectual class. There is no college for 
the conscience. 

Do the churches accomplish this educational pur- 
pose for the moral sense ? The popular clergy think 
miracles better than morality ; and have even less 
justice than truth. They justify the popular sins in 
the name of God ; are the allies of despotism in all 
its forms, military or industrial. Oppression by the 
sword and oppression by capital successively find 
favor with them. In America there are two com- 
mon ecclesiastical defences of African slavery : The 
negroes are the descendants of Ham, who laughed 
at his father Noah, — overtaken with drink, — and 
so it is right that Ham's children, four thousand 
years later, should be slaves to the rest of the world ; 
Slavery teaches the black men " our blessed relig- 
ion." Such is ecclesiastical justice ; and hence 
judge the value of the churches to educate the 
conscience of mankind ! It is strange how little the 
clergy of Christendom, for fifteen hundred years, have 
done for the morality of the world ; much for deco- 
rum, little for justice ; a deal for ecclesiastical cere- 
mony, but what for ecclesiastical righteousness? 
They put worship with the knee before the natural 
piety of the conscience. " Trusting in good works " 
is an offence to the Christian Church, as well 
Protestant as Catholic. 



94 



JUSTICE Am THE COXSCIEXCE. 



Iii Europe the consequences of this defect of 
moral culture have become alarming, even to such 
as fear only for money. That intellectual culture, 
which was once the cherished monopoly of the rich, 
has got diffused amongst wide ranks of men. who 
once sat in the shadow of intellectual darkness. 
There is no development of conscience to corre- 
spond therewith. The Protestant clergy have not 
enlightened the people on the science of religion. 
The Catholics had little light to spare, and that was 
spent in exhibiting " the holy coat of Treves." or 
images of " the Virgin,*' and in illuminating cardi- 
nals and popes set in the magic-lantern of the great 
ecclesiastical show-box. No pains, or little, have 
been taken with the moral culture of the people ; 
none scientifically and for the sake of justice and 
human kind. So the selfishness of the rich has spread 
with their intellectual culture. The few have long 
demanded a monopoly for themselves, and with 
their thunder blasted the mortal life of the prophets 
of justice sent by God to establish peace on earth 
and good-will amongst men. Now the many begin 
to demand a monopoly for themselves. Education, 
wealth, political power, was once a privilege, and 
they who enjoyed it made this their practical motto : 
' ; Down with the poor!" The feudal system fell 
before Dr. Faustus and his printing-press. Military 
civilization slowly gives way to industrial. Com- 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



95 



mon schools teach men to read. The steam-press 
cheapens literature ; the complicated tools of modern 
industry make the shop a college for the understand- 
ing; the laborer is goaded by his hate of wrong, 
which is the passion of morality, as love of right is 
the affection thereof ; — he sees small respect for 
justice in church or State. What shall save him 
from the selfishness about him, long dignified as 
philosophy, sanctified as religion, and reverenced as 
the law of God ! Do you wonder at " atheism " 
in Germany ; at communism in France ? Such 
" atheism " is the theory of the Church made 
popular ; the worst communism is only the principle 
of monopoly translated out of aristocracy into de- 
mocracy; the song of the noble in the people's 
mouth. The hideous cry, " Down with the rich ! " — 
is that an astonishment to the leaders of Europe, 
who have trod down the poor these thousand years ? 
When ignorance, moral and intellectual stupidity, 
brought only servile obedience from the vassal, the 
noble took delight in the oppression which trod his 
brother down. Now numbers are power ; that is the 
privilege of the people, and if the people, the privi- 
leged class of the future, have the selfishness of the 
aristocracy, what shall save the darling dollars of the 
rich ? " They that laughed at the grovelling worm, 
and trod on him, may cry and howl when they see 
the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon ! " 



96 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



The leaders of modern civilization have scorned 
justice. The chiefs of war, of industry, and the 
Church are joined in a solidarity of contempt; in 
America, not harlots, so much as politicians debauch 
the land. Conscience has been left out of the list 
of faculties to be intentionally developed in the 
places of honor. Is it marvellous if men find their 
own selfishness fall on their own heads? No army 
of special constables will supply the place of mo- 
rality in the people. If they do not reverence justice, 
what shall save the riches of the rich ? Ah me ! 
even the dollar flees to the Infinite God for protec- 
tion, and bows before the Higher Law its worship- 
pers despise. 

What moral guidance do the leading classes of 
men offer the people in either England, — the Euro- 
pean or American? Let the laboring men of Great 
Britain answer ; let Ireland, about to perish, groan 
out her reply ; let the three million African slaves 
bear the report to Heaven. " Ignorance is the 
mother of devotion," once said some learned fool ; 
monopolists act on the maxim. Ignorance of truth, 
ignorance of right, — will these be good directors, 
think you, of the class which has the privilege 
of numbers and then multitudinous agglomerated 
power ? " Reverence the eternal right," says Con- 
science, "that is moral piety!" "Reap as you sow," 
quoth human History. Alas for a church without 



JUSTICE AXD THE CONSCIENCE. 



97 



righteousness, and a State without right ! All his- 
tory shows their fate ! What is false to justice 
cannot stand; what is true to that cannot perish. 
Nothing can save wrong. 

A sentence is written against all that is unjust, 
written by God in the nature of man and the nature 
of the universe, because it is in the nature of the 
Infinite God. Fidelity to your faculties, trust in 
their convictions, that is justice to yourself ; a life in 
obedience thereto, that is justice towards men. Tell 
me not of successful wrong. The gain of injustice 
is a loss, its pleasure suffering. Iniquity seems to 
prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. 
The knave deceives himself. The miser, starving 
his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at 
death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, 
poor and naked and miserable. Whoso escapes a 
duty avoids a gain. Outward judgment often fails, 
inward justice never. Let a man try to love the 
wrong, and do the wrong, it is eating stones, and 
not bread ; the swift feet of justice are upon him, 
following with woollen tread, and her iron hands are 
round his neck. No man can escape from this,- no 
more than from himself. 

At first sight of the consequences of justice, 
redressing the evils of the world, its aspect seems 
stem and awful. Men picture the palace of this 

9 



98 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



king as hell : there is torment and anguish ; the 
waters are in trouble. The chariot of justice seems 
a car of Juggernaut crushing the necks of men ; they 
cry for mercy. But look again : the sternness all is 
gone ; nothing is awful there ; the palace of justice 
is all heaven, as before a hell ; the water is troubled 
only by an angel, and to heal the sick; the fancied 
car of Juggernaut is the triumphal chariot of man- 
kind riding forth to welfare. With . swift and noise- 
less feet justice follows the transgressor and clutches 
the iron hand about his neck; it was to save him 
that she came with swift and noiseless tread. This 
is the angel of God that flies from east to west, and 
where she stoops her broad wings jt is to bring the 
counsel of God, and feed mankind with angels' 
bread. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, from her 
own beak to feed its young, broods over their callow 
frame, and bears them on her wings, teaching them 
first to fly, so comes justice unto men. 

Sometimes men fear that justice will fail, wicked- 
ness appears so strong. On its side are the armies, 
the thrones of power, the riches, and the glory of the 
world. Poor men crouch down in despair. Shall 
justice fail and perish out from the world of men ? 
shall any thing that is wrong continually endure ? 
When attraction fails out of the world of matter, 
when God fails and there is no God, then shall 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



99 



justice fail, then shall wrong be able continually to 
endure ; not till then. 

The unity of the material world is beautiful, kept 
by attraction's universal force ; temperance in the 
body has fair effects, and wisdom in the mind. The 
face of Nature, how fair it is ; the face of strong 
and healthy, beauteous manhood is a dear thing to 
look upon. To intellectual eyes, the countenance of 
truth has a majestic charm. Wise men, with culti- 
vated mind, understanding, imagination, reason well 
developed, discovering and disclosing truth and 
beauty to mankind, are a fair spectacle. But I love 
the moral side of Deity yet more; love God as 
justice. His justice, our morality working with that, 
shall one day create a unity amongst all men more 
fair than the face of Nature, and add a wondrous 
beauty, wondrous happiness, to this great family of 
men. Will you fear lest a wrong should prove im- 
mortal ? So far as any thing is false, or wrong, it is 
weak; so far as true and right, is omnipotently 
strong. Never fear that a just thought shall fail to 
be a thing ; the power of God, the wisdom of God, 
and the justice of God are on its side, and it 
cannot fail, — no more than God himself can perish. 
Wrong is the accident of human development. 
Right is of the substance of humanity, justice the 
goal we are to reach. 



100 



JUSTICE AXD THE COXSCIEXCE. 



But in human affairs the justice of God must 
work by human means. Men are the measures 
of God's principles ; our morality the instrument of 
his justice, which stilleth alike the waves of the sea, 
the tumult of the people, and the oppressor's brutal 
laugh. Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, 
the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind. 
The ideal must become actual, God's thought a 
human thing, made real in a reign of righteousness, 
and a kingdom — no, a Commonwealth — of justice 
on the earth. You and I can help forward that 
work. God will not disdain to use our prayers, our 
self-denial, and the little atoms of justice that per- 
sonally belong to us, to establish his mighty work, — 
the development of mankind. 

You and I may work with Him, and, as on the 
floor of the Pacific Sea little insects lay the founda- 
tion of firm islands, slowly uprising from the tropic 
wave, — the ocean working with their humble toil, 
— so you and I in our daily life, in house, or field, 
or shop, obscurely faithful, may prepare the way for 
the republic of righteousness, the democracy of 
justice that is to come. Our own morality shall 
bless us here ; not in our outward life alone, but in 
the inward and majestic life of conscience. All the 
justice we mature shall bless us here, yea, and here- 
after ; but at our death we leave it added to the 
common store of humankind. Even the crumbs 



JUSTICE AND THE CONSCIENCE. 



101 



that fall from our table may save a brother's life. 
You and I may help deepen the channel of human 
morality in which God's justice runs, and the wrecks 
of evil, which now check the stream, be borne off 
the sooner by the strong, all-conquering tide of right, 
the river of God that is full of blessing. 



9* 



IV. 



OF LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



Love is of god. — 1 John iv. 7. 

Conscience deals with universal principles of 
morals. It has for its object justice, the divine law 
of the world, to be made ideal in the consciousness 
of mankind, and then actual in the facts of our con- 
dition and history. The affections deal with per- 
sons; with nothing but persons, for animate, and 
even inanimate, things get invested with a certain 
imaginary personality as soon as they become objects 
of affection. Ideas are the persons of the intellect, 
and persons the ideas of the heart. Persons are the 
central point of the affectional world. The love of 
persons is the function of the affections, as it is that 
of the mind and conscience to discover and accept 
truth and right. 

This love is a simple fact of consciousness ; a 
simple feeling, not capable of analysis, not easily 



LOVE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



103 



described, yet not likely to be confounded with any 
other fact of consciousness, or simple feeling. It is 
not directly dependent on the will, so is free from all 
immediate arbitrariness and caprice of volition. It 
is spontaneous, instinctive, disinterested, not seeking 
'the delight of the loving subject, but of the object 
loved. So it is not a desire of enjoying, but of de- 
lighting. As we love truth for itself, justice for its 
own sake, so we love persons not for their use, but 
for themselves ; we love them independently of their 
convenience to us. Love is its own satisfaction ; it 
is the love of loving, not merely of enjoying, an- 
other. 

Such is love itself, described by its central char- 
acter ; but it appears in many forms, and is specifi- 
cally modified by the character and condition of the 
person loved, the object of affection ; by the person 
who loves, the loving subject, and by the various 
passions and emotions mingling therewith. So it 
appears as fraternal, filial, connubial, and parental 
love; as friendship, love of a few who reciprocate 
the feeling; as charity, love of the needy; as patriot- 
ism, love of your nation ; and a philanthropy, the 
love of all mankind without respect to kin or coun- 
try. In all these cases love is the same thing in 
kind, but modified specifically by other emotions 
which connect themselves with it. Love is the piety 
of the affections. 



104 



LOYE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



Of course there are not only forms of love, where 
the quality is modified, but degrees which measure 
the different quantity thereof. The degree depends 
on the subject, and also on the object, of love. 

There is a state of consciousness in which we wish 
no ill to a man, but yet wish him no good. That is* 
the point of affectional indifference. The first re- 
move above that may be regarded as the lowest 
degree of love, hardly worthy of the name, a sort of 
zoophytic affection. You scarcely know whether to 
call it love or not. 

The highest degree of love is that state of feeling 
in which you are willing to abandon all, your com- 
fort, convenience, and life, for the sake of another, 
to sacrifice your delight in him to his delight in you, 
and to do this not merely by volition, as an act of 
conscience, and in obedience to a sense of duty, — 
not merely by impulse, in obedience to blind feeling, 
as an act of instinct, — but to do all this consciously, 
yet delightedly, with a knowledge of the conse- 
quences, by a movement which is not barely instinc- 
tive, and not merely of the will, but spontaneous; 
to do all this not merely out of gratitude for favors 
received, for a reward paid in advance, nor for the 
sake of happiness in heaven, a recompense after- 
wards ; with no feeling of grateful obligation, no 
wish for a recompense, but from pure, entire, and 
disinterested affection. 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



105 



This highest ideal degree of love is sometimes 
attained, but, like all the great achievements of hu- 
man nature, it is rare. There are few masterpieces 
in sculpture, painting, architecture, in poetry or 
music. The ideal and actual are seldom the same 
in any performance of mankind. It is rarely that 
human nature rises to its highest ideal mark ; some 
great hearts notch the mountains and leave their line 
high up above the heads of ordinary men, — a history 
and a prophecy. Yet the capacity for this degree 
of love belongs to the nature of man as man. The 
human excellence which is actual in Jesus, is possi- 
ble in Iscariot ; give him time and opportunity, the 
man will appear in him also. I doubt not that the 
worst man ever hanged or even honored for his 
crime, will one day attain a degree of love which the 
loftiest men now cannot comprehend. This power 
of loving to this degree, it seems to me, is generic, 
of the nature of man ; the absence of it is a mark 
of immaturity, of greenness, and clownish ness of 
the heart. But at this day the power of affection is 
distributed as diversely as power of mind or con- 
science, and so the faculty of loving is by no means 
the same in actual men. All are not at once capa- 
ble of the same quantity of love. 

There are also different degrees of love occasioned 
by the character of the object of affection. All can- 
not receive the same quantity. Thus you cannot 



106 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



love a dog so well as a man, nor a base, mean man 
so much as a great, noble man, with the excellences 
of mind and conscience, heart and soul. Can you 
and I love an Arnold as well as a Washington ? a 
kidnapper as well as a philanthropist? God may- 
do so, not you and I. So with finite beings the 
degree of love is affected by the character of both 
the subject and the object of affection. 

It is unfortunate that we have but one word in 
English to express affectional action in respect to 
myself and to other men ; we speak of a man loving 
himself, and loving another. But it is plain that I 
cannot love myself at all in the sense that I love 
another; for self-love is intransitive, — subject and 
object are identical. It is one thing to desire my 
own delight, and something quite opposite to desire 
the delight of another. So, for the sake of clearness, 
I will use the words Self-love for the normal feeling 
of a man towards himself ; Selfishness for the ab- 
normal and excessive degree of this; and Love for 
the normal feeling towards others. 

Self-love is the lesser cohesive attraction which 
keeps the man whole and a unit, which is necessary 
for his consistency and existence as an individual. 
It is a part of morality, and is to the man what 
impenetrability is to the atoms of matter, and what 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



107 



the centripetal force is to the orbs of heaven ; with- 
out it, the man's personality would soon be lost in 
the press of other men. 

Selfishness is the excess of this self-love ; no 
longer merely conservative of myself, I become inva- 
sive, destructive of others, and appropriate what 
is theirs to my own purposes. 

Love is the greater gravitation which unites me 
to others ; the expansive and centrifugal power that 
extends my personality, and makes me find my de- 
light in others, and desire them to have theirs in me. 
In virtue of this I feel for the sorrows of another 
man ; they become, in some measure, my sorrows, 
just in proportion to the degree of my love ; his joys 
also are my joys just in the same degree ; I am 
gladdened with his delights, honored in his honors ; 
and so my consciousness is multiplied by all the 
persons that I love, for my affectional personality is 
extended to them all, and with a degree of power 
exactly proportionate to my degree of love. So 
affection makes one man into many men, as it were. 

The highest action of any power is in combina- 
tion with all the rest. Yet there is much imperfect 
action of the faculties, working severally, not jointly. 
The affections may act independent of the con- 
science, as it of them. It is related that an eminent 
citizen of Athens had a son who committed an 
offence for which the law demanded the two eyes 



108 



LOVE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



of the offender ; the father offered one of his to save 
one of his son's. Here his heart, not his conscience, 
prompted the deed. When the affections thus con- 
trol the conscience, we have the emotion called 
Mercy, which is the preponderance of love for a 
person, not love for right, of love for the concrete 
man over the abstract idea of justice. In a normal 
condition, it seems to me that love of persons is a 
little in advance of love of the abstract right, and 
that spontaneous love triumphs over voluntary 
morality ; the heart carries the day before the 
conscience. This is so in most women, who are 
commonly fairer examples of the natural power of 
both the moral and affectional faculties, and repre- 
sent the natural tendency of human nature better 
than men. I think they seldom sacrifice a person 
to an abstract rule of conduct ; or at least, if there 
is a collision between conscience and the heart, with 
them the heart carries the day. Non-resistants, 
having a rule of conduct which forbids them to hurt 
another, will yet do this for a wife or child, though 
not for themselves, their love being greater than 
their selfishness. This is so common that it seems 
a rule of nature, — that the affectional is a little 
stronger than the moral instinct, and where both 
have received due culture, and there is still a col- 
lision between the two, that mercy is the law. But 
here no private love should prevail against right, 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



109 



and only universal love come in to its aid to supply 
the defect of conscience. Brutus, so the story goes, 
finds his son committing a capital offence, and 
orders his head struck off, sacrificing his private and 
paternal love to his universal and human love of 
justice, his love of a special man to his love of what 
. is right for all men. This is as it should be. 

Conscience may be cultivated in an exclusive 
manner to the neglect of the affections. Then 
conscience is despotic ; the man always becomes 
hard and severe, a stern father, a cold neighbor, a 
harsh judge, a cruel magistrate. He will err often, 
but always on the side of vengeance. Love im- 
proves the quality of finite morality, for it is the 
same as divine justice. Absolute justice and abso- 
lute love are never antagonistic, but identical. 

The affections may be cultivated at the expense 
of conscience. This often happens with such as 
limit the range of their love to a few friends, to 
their own family, class, or nation. The world is 
full of examples of this. Here is one- who loves 
her own family with intense love, — her husband, 
children, grandchildren, and collateral relations, — 
the love always measured by their propinquity to 
her. Like the crow in the fable, she thinks her own 
young the fairest of the fair, heedless of their vul- 



110 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



garity, and worldly and ignoble materialism. She 
is generous to them, no she-crow more bounteous 
to her young, but no hawk was ever more niggardly 
to all beyond. Here neglect of justice and scorn of 
conscience have corrupted her affections ; and her 
love is only self-love, — for she loves these but as 
limbs of herself, — and has degenerated into selfish-, 
ness in a wider form, not simple, but many-headed 
selfishness. 

1 once knew of a man who was a slave-trader 
on the Atlantic, and a proverb for cruelty among 
the felons of that class ; he was rich, and remark- 
ably affectionate in his own family ; he studied 
the comfort of his daughters and wife, was self- 
denying for their sake. Yet he did not hesitate to 
break up a thousand homes in Africa, that he might 
adorn his own in New England. The lion, the 
tiger, the hyena, each is kind to his whelps, — for 
instinctive love affects the beast also. No man 
has universal love ; conscience gives the rule thereof, 
and so in applying justice applies God's universal 
love to that special case. Seek to exercise love 
without justice, and you injure some one. 

The same form of affection appears on a larger 
scale in the members of a class in society, or a sect 
in religion ; it leads to kindliness within the circle 
of its range, but intense cruelty is often practised 
beyond that limit. All the aristocracies of the 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. Ill 



world, the little sects of Christendom, and the great 
sects of the human race, furnish examples of this. 

What is called patriotism is another form of the 
same limited love, — -a culture of the affections 
without regard to justice. Hence it has been held 
patriotic to build up your country by the ruin of 
another land, to love Jacob and hate Esau. This 
feeling is of continual occurrence. ." Lands inter- 
sected by a narrow frith abhor each other," cities 
that are rivals in trade seek to ruin each other ; 
nations do the same. 

In all these cases, where ove is limited to the 
family, class, sect, or nation, the aim is this : Mutu- 
ality of love within the narrow circle ; without 
its range, mutuality of selfishness. Thus love is 
deemed only a privilege of convention and for a 
few, arbitrarily limited by caprice; not a right, of 
nature and for all, the extension thereof to be lim- 
ited only by the power, not the will, of the man 
who loves. 

All the above are common forms of limited 
affection. The domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and 
political institutions of the world, the educational 
and commercial machinery of the world, tend to 
produce this result. All the religions of the world 
have practically fostered this mistake, by starting 
with the idea, that God loved best the men who 
worshipped Him in a certain conventional form. 



112 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



But this expansive and centrifugal power may 
be cultivated to the neglect of natural and well- 
proportioned self-love. This also is a defect, for 
the conservative or self-preserving power is quite as 
necessary as the beneficent and expansive power. 
Impenetrability is the necessary concomitant of 
attraction. The individual is first an integer, 
then a fraction of society ; he must keep his per- 
sonal integrity and discreteness of person, and not 
be lost in the press and crowd of other persons. 
What is true of bodies is not less so of spirits. 
Here is a man with so little self-love, that his per- 
sonality seems lost ; he is no person, but now 
this man, now that, — a free port of trade, where 
all individualities are unloaded and protected ; but 
he has none. His circumference is everywhere ; 
his centre nowhere. He keeps other men's vine- 
yards, not his own. This is a fault ; doubtless a 
rare one, still a fault which destroys the individual 
character of the man. 

There is, doubtless, a large difference amongst 
men in respect to the original power of the affec- 
tions, — a difference of nature ; a great difference in 
respect to the acquired power of love, — a difference 
of. culture; a difference, also, in respect to the mode 
of culture of the heart, which may be developed 
jointly with mind and conscience, or independent of 



LOVE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



113 



them, — a difference in proportion. Thus, practi- 
cally, the affectional power of men varies as much 
as the intellectual or the moral power. 

Look at the place which the affections occupy in 
the nature of man. In point of time they precede 
the intellectual and moral powers in their order of 
development, they have a wider range in the world 
than those other faculties. You find affection in 
animals. In some, love is very powerful. True, it 
appears there as rudimentary, and for a short time, 
as in birds, grouping them into brief cohesions. In 
some animals it is continual, yet not binding one 
individual to another in a perpetual combination, 
but grouping many individuals into a flock. The 
flock remains ; all the individuals sustain a constant 
relation to the flock, but most unconstant relations 
to one another, — the male and female parting 
fellowship when the annual season of passion is 
over, the parents neglecting their child as soon as it 
outgrows the mother's care. Throughout the animal 
world love does not appear to exist for its own sake, 
but only as a means to a material end; now to 
create, then to protect, the individual and the race. 
Besides, it is purely instinctive, not also self-con- 
scious and voluntary action. The animal seems not 
an agent, but only a tool of affection, his love neces- 
10* 



114 



LOVE AXD THE AFEECTIOXS. 



sitated, not spontaneous. Accordingly, in its more 
permanent forms, love is merely gregarious, and 
does not come to individual sociality ; it seems but 
a more subtle mode of gravitation. A herd of 
buffaloes is only an aggregation of members, not a 
society of free individuals, who group from choice. 
Friendship, I think, never appears amongst animals, 
excepting such as are under the eye of man, and 
have, in some manner not easily understood, ac- 
quired his habits. The animal does not appear to 
have private affinities, and to attach himself to this 
or that fellow-being with the discrimination of love ; 
development of the affections is never sought for as 
a thing good in itself, but only as a means to some 
other good. 

With man there is this greater gravitation of men 
into masses ; which, without doubt, is at first as 
instinctive as the grouping of bees or beavers; but 
man is capable of modifying the action of this gre- 
garious instinct so, on the one side, as to form 
minute cohesions of friendship, wherein each follows 
his private personal predilections, his own elective 
affinities ; and, 'also, on the other, to form vast asso- 
ciations of men gravitating into a nation, ruled by a 
•common will; and one day we shall, no doubt, 
group all these nations into one great family of 
races, with a distinct self-consciousness of universal 
brotherhood. 



LOYE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



115 



It is instructive to look on the rudimentary love 
in animals, and see the beginnings of human na- 
ture, as it were, so low down, and watch the suc- 
cessive risings in successive creations. It helps us 
to see the unity of the world, and also to foretell 
the development of human nature ; for what is there 
accomplished by successive creation of new races, 
with us takes place by the continual development of 
the same individual. 

It is according to the order of nature, that the 
power to love should be developed before the power 
to think. All things with us begin with a feeling ; 
next enlarge to an idea ; then take the form of ac- 
tion, the mind mediating between the inward senti- 
ment and the outward deed. We delight in love 
long before we have any conscious joy in truth or 
justice. In childhood we are acquainted with per- 
sons before we know things ; indeed, things are 
invested with a dim personality in the mind of 
children and of savages. We know father and 
mother long before we have any notion of justice 
or of truth. The spontaneous development of the 
heart in children is one of the most beautiful phe- 
nomena in nature. The child has self-love, but no 
selfishness ; his nebulous being not yet solidified to 
the impenetrability which is to come. His first 



116 



LOVE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



joys are animal, the next affeciional, the delight of 
loving and of being loved ! 

Indeed, with most men the affections take the 
lead of all the spiritual powers ; only they act in a 
confined sphere of the family, class, sect, or nation. 
Men trust the heart more than the head. The 
mass of men have more confidence in a man of 
great affection than in one of great thought; par- 
don is commonly popular, mercy better loved than 
severity. Men rejoice when the murderer is arrest- 
ed ; but shout at his acquittal of the crime. The 
happiness of the greater part of men comes from 
afTectional more than intellectual or moral sources. 
Hence the abundant interest felt in talk about per- 
sons, the popular fondness for personal anecdotes, 
biographies, ballads, love-stories, and the like. 
The mass of men love the person of their great 
man, not his opinions, and care more to see his 
face and hear his voice than to know his ideas of 
truth and of justice. It is so with religious teachers. 
Men sympathize with the person before they take 
his doctrine. Hence the popular fondness for por- 
traits of great men, for their autographs, and even 
for relics. The person of Jesus of Nazareth has 
left a much greater impression on the hearts of men, 
than his doctrines have made on the mind and con- 
science of Christendom. For this reason, religious 



LOYE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



117 



pictures preserve scenes which have nothing to do 
with the truth or the right that the man repre- 
sented, but are merely personal details, often desti- 
tute of outward beauty, of no value to the mind, of 
much to the affections. This explains the popular 
fondness for stories and pictures of the sufferings of 
martyrs. A crucifix is nothing to the mind and 
conscience ; — how much to the heart of Christen- 
dom ! Hence, too, men love to conceive of God in 
the person of a man. 

Now and then you find a man of mere intellectual 
or moral power, who takes almost his whole delight 
in the exercise of his mind or conscience. Such men 
are rare and wonderful, but by no means admirable. 

Without the culture of the affections life is poor 
and unsatisfactory; truth seems cold, and justice 
stern. Let a man have the piety of the body, of the 
mind and conscience, it is not satisfactory without 
the piety of the heart. Let him have this also, and 
what a world of delight it opens to him ! 

Take the whole population of Christendom, there 
are but one or two in a thousand who have much 
delight in intellectual pursuits, who find a deep and 
reconciling joy in science, or literature, or any art; 
even music, the most popular of all, has a narrow 
range. But almost every one has ^ delight in the 
affections which quite transcends his intellectual joy. 
When a new book comes into being, if it be brave 



118 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



and good, it will quicken the progress of mankind ; 
men rejoice, and the human race slowly folds to its 
bosom the works of Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 
Milton, and will not willingly let them die. When 
a new child is born into some noble and half-starved 
family, it diminishes their " comforts," it multiplies 
their toil, it divides their loaf, it crowds their bed, and 
shares the unreplenished fire ; but with what joy is 
it welcomed there ! Men of great genius, who can 
judge the world by thought, feel less delight at the 
arrival of some great poet at his mind's estate, than 
many a poor mother feels at the birth of a new soul 
into the world ; far less than she feels in the rude 
affection of her home, naked, comfortless, and cold. 
I know there is a degradation caused by poverty, 
when the heart dies out of the man, and " the 
mother hath sodden her own child." But such de- 
pravity is against nature, and only takes place when 
physical suffering has worn off the human qualities, 
one by one, till only impenetrability is left. 

You find men that are ignorant, rich men too ; 
and they are not wholly ashamed of it. They say, 
" Early circumstances hindered my growth of mind, 
for I was poor. You may pity, but you should not 
blame me." If you should accuse a man of lacking 
heart, of having no culture of affection, every one 
would feel it was a great reproach, and, if true, a 
fault without excuse. No man ever confesses this, 
— a sin against human nature. 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



119 



All men need something to poetize and idealize 
their life a little, something which they value for 
more than its use, and which is a symbol of their 
emancipation from the mere materialism and 
drudgery of daily life. Rich men attempt to do 
this with beautiful houses, with costly furniture, 
with sumptuous food, and " wine too good for the 
tables of pontiffs," thereby often only thickening 
and gilding the chain which binds the soul to earth. 
Some men idealize their life a little with books, 
music, flowers ; with science, poetry, and art ; with 
thought. But such men are comparatively rare, 
even in Scotland and New England, — two or three 
in the hundred, not more. In America the cheap 
newspaper is the most common instrument used for 
this purpose, — a thing not without great value. 
But the majority of men do this idealizing by the 
affections, which furnish the chief poetry of their 
life, — the wife and husband delighting in one 
another, both in their children. Burns did not ex- 
aggerate in his Cotter's Saturday Night, when he 
painted the laborer's joy : 

" His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily, 

His clean keartk-stane, kis tkriftie wifie's smile, 
Tke lisping infant prattling on kis knee, 
Does a' kis -weary kiaugk and care beguile, 
An' makes kim quite forget kis labor an' kis toil." 



120 



LOVE AXD THE AFFECTIONS 



I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a 
woman could spend so many years of her life with 
little children, and be content ! In her satisfaction 
he found a proof of her "inferiority," and thought 
her but the " servant of a wooden cradle," herself 
almost as wooden. But in that gentle companion- 
ship she nursed herself and fed a higher faculty 
than our poor pedant, with his sophomoric wit, 
had yet brought to consciousness, and out of her 
wooden cradle got more than he had learned to 
know. A physician once, with unprofessional im- 
piety, complained that we are not born men, but 
babies. He did not see the value of infancy as a 
delight to the mature, and for the education of the 
heart. At one period of life we need objects of 
instinctive passion, at another, of instinctive benev- 
olence without passion. 

I am not going to undervalue the charm of wis- 
dom, nor the majestic joy which comes from loving 
principles of right; but if I could have only one 
of them, give me the joy of the affections, — my 
delight in others, theirs in me, — the joy of delight- 
ing, rather than the delight of enjoying. Here 
is a woman with large intellect, and attainments 
w T hich match her native powers, but with, a genius 
for love, developed in its domestic, social, patriotic, 
human form, with a wealth of affection w T hich sur- 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



121 



passes even her affluence of intellect. Her chief 
delight is to bless the men who need her blessing. 
Naturalists carry mind into matter, and seek the 
eternal truth of God in the perishing forms of the 
fossil plant, or the evanescent tides of the sea ; she 
carries love into the lanes and kennels of society, to 
give bread to the needy, eyes to the blind, mind 
to the ignorant, and a soul to men floating and 
weltering in this sad pit of society. I do not under- 
value intellect in any of its nobler forms, but if 
God gave me my choice to have either the vast 
intellect of a Newton, an Aristotle, a Shakspeare, a 
Homer, the ethical insight of the great legislators, 
the moral sense of Moses, or Menu, the conscience 
of men who discover justice and organize unalien- 
able right into human institutions, — or else to take 
the heroic heart which so loves mankind, and I 
were to choose what brought its possessor the 
greatest joy, — I would surely take, not the great 
head, but the great heart, the power of love before 
the power of thought. 

I know we often envy the sons of genius, men 
with tall heads and brain preternaturally delicate 
and nice, thinking God partial. They are not to 
be envied : the top of Mount Washington is very 
lofty; it far transcends the neighboring hills, and 
overlooks the mountain tops from the Mississippi 
to the Atlantic main, and has no fellow from the 
11 



122 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



Northern Sea down to the Mexique Bay. Men 
look up and wonder at its tall height ; but it must 
take the rude blasts of every winter upon its naked, 
granite head ; its sides are farrowed with the storm. 
It is of unequalled loftiness, but freezing cold ; 
while in the low valleys and on the mountain's 
southern slopes the snow melts quick away, early 
the grass comes green, the flowers lift up their 
modest, lovely face, and shed their fragrance on 
the sudden spring. Who shall tell me that intel- 
lectual or moral grandeur is higher in the scale of 
powers than the heart! It is not so. Mind and 
conscience are great and noble; truth and justice 
are exceeding dear, but love is dearer and more 
precious than both. 

See the array of natural means provided for the 
development and education of the heart. Spiritual 
love, joining with the instinctive passion which peo- 
ples the world, attracts mankind into little binary 
groups, families of two. Therein we are all born of 
love. Love watches over our birth. Our earliest 
knowledge of mankind is of one animated by the 
instinctive power of affection, developed into con- 
scious love. The first human feeling extended 
towards us is a mother's love. Even the rude 
woman in savage Patagonia turns her sunniest 
aspect to her child ; the father does the same. In 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 123 

our earliest years we are almost wholly in the hands 
of women, in whom the heart emphatically prevails 
over the head. They attract and win, while man 
only invades and conquers. The first human force 
we meet is woman's love. All this tends to waken 
and unfold the affections, to give them their culture, 
and hasten their growth. The other children of 
kindred blood, asking or giving kind offices; affec- 
tionate relations and friends, who turn out the fairest 
side of nature and themselves to the new-born 
stranger, — all of these are helps in the education of 
the heart. All men unconsciously put on amiable 
faces in the presence of children, thinking it is not 
good to cause these little ones to offend. As the 
roughest of men will gather flowers for little children, 
so in their presence he turns out "the silver lining" 
of his cloudy character to the young immortals, and 
would not have them know the darker part. The 
sourest man is not wholly hopeless when he will not 
blaspheme before his son. 

The child's affection gets developed on the smallest 
scale at first. The mother's love tempts forth the 
son's ; he loves the bosom that feeds him, the lips 
which caress, the person who loves. Soon the circle 
widens, and includes brothers and sisters, and famil- 
iar friends ; then gradually enlarges more and more, 
the affections strengthening as their empire spreads. 
So love travels from person to person, from the 



124 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



mother or nurse to the family at home ; then to the 
relatives and frequent guests ; next to the children 
at school, to the neighborhood, the town, the State, 
the nation ; and at last manly love takes in the 
whole family of mankind, counting nothing alien 
that is human. 

You often find men lamenting the lack of early 
education of the intellect : it is a grievous deficiency ; 
and it takes the hardest toil in after years to supply 
the void, if indeed it can ever be done. It is a mis- 
fortune to fail of finding an opportunity for the cul- 
ture of conscience in childhood, and to acquire bad 
habits in youth, which at great cost you must revo- 
lutionize at a later day. But it is a yet greater loss 
to miss the opportunity of affectional growth ; a sad 
thing to be born, and yet not into a happy home. — 
to lack the caresses, the fondness, the self-denying 
love, which the child's nature needs so much to take, 
and the mother's needs so much to give. The 
cheeks which affection does not pinch, which no 
mother kisses, have always a sad look, that nothing 
can conceal, and in childhood get a scar which they 
will carry all their days. What sad faces one always 
sees in the asylums for orphans ! It is more fatal to 
neglect the heart than the head. 

In a world like this, not much advanced as yet in 
any high qualities of spirit, but still advancing, it is 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



125 



beautiful to see the examples of love which we 
sometimes meet, the exceptional cases that to me 
are prophecies of that good time which is so long in 
coming. I will not speak of the love of husband 
and wife, or of parent and child, for each of these is 
mainly controlled by a strong generic instinct, which 
deprives the feeling of its personal and voluntary 
character. I will speak of spontaneous love not 
connected with the connubial or parental instincts. 
You see it in the form of friendship, charity, pat- 
riotism, and philanthropy, where there is no tie of 
kindred blood, no impulsion of instincts to excite, 
but only a kindred heart and an attractive soul. 
Men tell us that the friendship of the ancients has 
passed away. But it is not so ; Damon and Pythias 
are perpetually reproduced in every walk of life, 
save that where luxury unnerves the man, or avarice 
coins him into a copper cent, or ambition degrades 
him to lust of fame and power. Every village has 
its tale of this character. The rude life of the bor- 
derers on the frontiers of civilization, the experience 
of men in navigation, in all the difficult emer- 
gencies of life, bring out this heroic affection of the 
heart. 

What examples do we all know of friendship and 
of charity! Here is a woman of large intellect, 
well disciplined, well stored, gifted with mind and 
11* 



126 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



graced with its specific piety, whose chief delight it 
is to do kind deeds to those beloved. Her life is 
poured out, like the fair light of heaven, around the 
bedside of the sick. She comes like a last sacra- 
ment to the dying man, bringing back a reminiscence 
of the best things of mortal life, and giving a fore- 
tasted prophecy of the joys of heaven, her very 
presence an alabaster box of ointment, exceeding 
precious, filling the house with the balm of its thou- 
sand flowers. Her love adorns the paths wherein 
she teaches youthful feet to tread, and blooms in 
amaranthine loveliness above the head laid low in 
earth. She would feel insulted by gratitude ; God 
can give no greater joy to mortal men than the con- 
sciousness whence such a life wells out. Not con- 
tent with blessing the few whom friendship joins to 
her, her love enlarges and runs over the side of the 
private cup, and fills the bowl of many a needy and 
forsaken one. Self-denial is spontaneous, — self-in- 
dulgence of the noble heart to her. In the presence 
of such affection as this, the intellect of a Plato 
would be abashed, and the moral sense of a saint 
would shrink and say to itself : " Stand back, my 
soul, for here is somewhat far holier than thou ! " 
In sight of such excellence I am ashamed of intel- 
lect ; I would not look upon the greatest mind that 
ever spoke to ages yet unborn. 

There is far more of this charity than most men 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



127 



imagine. You find it amid the intense worldliness 
of this city, where upstart Mammon scoffs at God ; 
in the hovels of the poor, in the common dwellings 
of ordinary men, and in the houses of the rich ; 
drive out nature with a dollar, still she comes 
back. This love is the feminine saviour of man- 
kind, and bestows a peace which nothing else can 
give, which nought can take away. From its na- 
ture this plant grows in by-places, where it is not 
seen by ordinary eyes, till wounded you flee thither ; 
then it heals your smart, or when beheld fills you 
with wonder at its human loveliness. 

The calling of a clergyman in a great, wicked 
town brings him acquainted with ghastly forms of 
human wickedness, — with felons of conscience, and 
men idiotic in their affections, who seem born with 
an arithmetic instead of a conscience, and a vulture 
for a heart: but we also find those angels of affec- 
tion in whom the dearest attribute of God becomes 
incarnate, and his love made flesh ; else an earnest 
minister might wear a face grim, stony, battered all 
over by the sad sight of private suffering, and the 
sadder sight of conscious and triumphant wicked- 
ness trampling the needy down to dust, and treating 
the Almighty with sneer and scoff. 

Books tell us of but few examples of patriotism : 
they are common. Let us see examples in its vul- 



128 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



garest, and so most honored form, — love of country, 
to the exclusion and hate of other lands. Men tell 
of Reguius, how he laid down his life for his country, 
the brave old heathen that he was. But in the 
wickedest of modern wars, when America plun- 
dered Mexico of soil and men, many a deluded 
volunteer laid down his life, I doubt not, with a 
heroism as pure, and a patriotism as strong, as that 
of Regulus or Washington. Detesting the unholy 
war, let us honor the virtue which it brought to 
light. 

This virtue of patriotism is common with the 
mass of men in this republic. In aristocratic gov- 
ernments the rich men and nobles have it in a 
large degree ; it is, however, somewhat selfish, — a 
love of their private privileges more than of the 
general rights of their countrymen. With us in 
America, especially in the seat of riches and of 
trade, there seems little patriotism in the wealthy, 
or more educated class of men ; small fondness for 
the commonwealth in that quarter. Exclusive love 
of gain drives that out of their heart. To the dollar, 
all lands, all governments, are the same. 

But apart from patriotism, charity, friendship, I 
have seen most noble examples of the same affec- 
tion on a yet wider scale, ■ — I mean philanthropy, 
the love of all mankind. You all know men, whose 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



129 



affection, at first beginning at home, and loving 
only the mother who gave her baby nature's bread, 
has now transcended family and kin, gone beyond 
all private friendships with like-minded men, over- 
leaped the far barriers of our native land, and now, 
loving family, friend, and country, loves likewise all 
humankind. This is the largest expanse of affec- 
tion ; the man's heart, once filled with love for one, 
for a few, for men in need beneath his eye, for his 
countrymen, has now grown bountiful to all. To 
love the lovely, to sympathize with the like- 
minded, — everybody can do that; — all save an 
ill-born few, whom we may pity, but must not 
blame, for their congenital deformity and dwarf- 
ishness; — but to love the unlovely, to sympathize 
with the contrary-minded, to give to the uncharita- 
ble, to forgive such as never pity, to be just to men 
who make iniquity a law, to pay their sleepless 
hate with never-ceasing love, — that is the triumph 
of the affections, the heroic degree of love ; you 
must be but little lower than the angels to do that. 
It is one of the noblest attainments of man, and 
in this he becomes most like God. The intellect 
acquaints you with truth, the thought of God ; con- 
science informs you with his justice, the moral will 
of God ; and the heart fitly exercised gives you a 
fellowship with his eternal love, the most intimate 
feeling of the Infinite Father ; having that, you can 



130 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



love men spite of the imperfections of their con- 
duct and character, — can love the idiot, the crimi- 
nal, hated or popular, — be towardly to the fro- 
ward, kind to the unmerciful, and on them bestow 
the rain and the sunshine of your benevolence, your 
bounty limited only by your power, not your will, 
to bless, asking no gratitude, expecting no return. 

I do not look for this large philanthropy in all 
men here, only in a few. All have a talent for lov- 
ing, though this is as variously distributed as any 
intellectual gift ; few have a genius for benevolence. 
The sublime of patriotism, the holy charity, and 
the delicate friendship, are more common. The 
narrower love between husband and wife, child and 
parent, has instinct to aid it, and is so common, 
that, like daily bread and nightly sleep, we forget 
to be thankful for it, not heeding how much de- 
pends thereon. 

The joys of affection are the commonest of joys ; 
sometimes the sole poetic ornament in the hutch of 
the poor, they are also the best things in the rich 
man's palace. They are the Shekinah, the presence 
of God in the dwellings of men. It is through the 
affections that most men learn religion. I know 
they often say, " Fear first taught us God/' No ! 
Fear first taught us a devil, — often worshipped as 
the God, — and with that fear all devils fade away, 
they and their misanthropic hell. Ghosts cannot 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



131 



stand the light, nor devils love. My affections bind 
me to God, and as the heart grows strong my ever- 
deepening consciousness of God grows more and 
more, till God's love occupies the heart, and the sen- 
timent of God is mine. 

Notwithstanding the high place which the affec- 
tions hold in the natural economy of man, and the 
abundant opportunities for their culture and develop- 
ment furnished by the very constitution of the family, 
but little value is placed thereon in what is called 
the " superior education " of mankind. The class of 
men that lead the Christian world have but a small 
development of affection. Patriotism is the only 
form of voluntary love which it is popular with such 
men to praise, — that only for its pecuniary value; 
charity seems thought a weakness, to be praised 
only on Sundays ; avarice is the better weekday 
virtue ; friendship is deemed too romantic for a trad- 
ing town. Philanthropy is mocked at by statesmen 
and leading capitalists ; it is the standing butt of the 
editor, whereat he shoots his shaft, making up in its 
barb and venom for his arrows' lack of length and 
point. Metropolitan clergymen rejoice in calum- 
niating philanthropy ; " Even the golden rule hath 
its exceptions," says one of them just now. It is 
deemed important to show that Jesus of Nazareth 



132 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



was " no philanthropist*," and cared nothing for the 
sin of the powerful, which trod men into a mire of 
blood! In what is called the "highest education," 
only the understanding and the taste get a consider- 
able culture. The piety of the heart is thought 
" inelegant " in society, unscholarly with the learned, 
and a dreadful heresy in the churches. In literature 
it is not love that wins the palm ; it is power to rule 
by force, — force of muscles or force of mind : " None 
but the brave deserve the fair." In popular speech 
it is the great fighters that men glorify, not the great 
lovers of mankind. Interest eats out the heart from 
commerce and politics ; controlling men have no 
faith in disinterested benevolence ; to them the nation 
is a monstrous shop, a trading city but a bar-room 
in a commercial tavern, the church a desk for the 
accountant, the world a market ; men are buyers and 
sellers, employers and employed. Governments are 
mainly without love, often without justice. This 
seems their function: To protect capital and tax 
toil. 

Hitherto justice has not been done to the affections 
in Religion. We have been taught to fear God, not 
to love Him, to see Him in the earthquake and the 
storm, in the deluge, or the " ten plagues of Egypt," 
in the " black death," or the cholera ; not to see God 
in the morning sun, or in the evening full of radiant 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



133 



gentleness. Love has little to do with the popular 
religion of our time. God is painted as a dreadful 
Eye, which bores through the darkness to spy out 
the faults of men who must sneak and skulk about 
the world; or as a naked, bony Arm, uplifted to 
crush his children down with horrid squelch to end- 
less hell. The long line of scoffers from Lucian, 
their great hierophant, down to Voltaire and his 
living coadjutors, have not shamed the priesthood 
from such revolting images of deity. Sterner men, 
who saw the loveliness of the dear God and set it 
forth in holy speech and holy life, — to meet a fate 
on earth far harder than the scoffer's doom, — they 
cannot yet teach men that love of God casts every 
fear away. In the Catholic mythology the Virgin 
Mary, its most original creation, represents pure 
love, — she, and she alone. • Hence is she, (and de- 
servedly,) the popular object of worship in all Cath- 
olic countries. But the sterner Protestant sects 
have the Roman Godhead after Mary is taken 
away. 

When this is so in religion, do you wonder at the 
lack of love in law and custom, in politics and trade ? 
Shall I write satires on mankind? Rather let me 
make its apology. Man is a baby yet ; the time for 
the development of conscious love has not arrived. 
Let us not say, " No man eat fruit of thee hereafter;" 

12 



134 



LOVE AND THE AEFECTIOXS. 



let us wait ; dig about the human tree and encour- 
age it ; in time it shall put forth figs. 

Still affection holds this high place in the nature 
of man. Out of our innermost hearts there comes 
the prophecy of a time when it shall have a kindred 
place in history and the affairs of men. In the 
progress of mankind, love takes continually a higher 
place ; what was adequate and well-proportioned 
affection a century ago, is not so now. Long since, 
prophets rose up to declare the time was coming 
when all hate should cease, there should be war no 
more, and the sword should be beaten into the 
ploughshare. Were they dreamers of idle dreams? 
It was human nature which spoke through them its 
lofty prophecy ; and mankind fulfils the highest pre- 
diction of every noble man. The fighter is only the 
hod-carrier of the philanthropist. Soldiers build the 
scaffolding ; with the voice of the trumpet, with the 
thunder of the captain, and manifold shouting, are 
the stones drawn to the spot, the cement of human 
architecture has been mixed with human blood, but 
it is a temple of peace which gets builded at the 
last. 

In every man who lives a true life the affections 
grow continually. He began with his mother and 
his nurse, and journeyed ever on, pitching his tent 



LOYE AXD THE AFFECTIONS. 



135 



each night a day's march nearer God. His own 
children helped him love others yet more ; his chil- 
dren's children carried the old man's heart quite out 
beyond the bounds of kin and country, and taught 
him to love mankind. He grows old in learning to 
love, and now, when age sets the silver diadem upon 
his brow, not only is his love of truth and justice 
greater than before, — not only does he love his wife 
better than in his hour of prime, when manly instinct 
added passion to his heart, — not only does he love 
his children more than in their infancy, when the 
fatherly instinct first began its work, ■ — not only has 
he more spontaneous love for his grandchildren than 
he felt for his first new-born babe, — but his mature 
affection travels beyond his wife, and child, and 
children's child, to the whole family of men, mourns 
in their grief, and joys in their delight. All his 
powers have been greatened in his long, industrious, 
and normal life, and so his power of love has 
continually enlarged. The human objects do not 
wholly satisfy his heart's desire. The ideal of love 
is nowhere actual in the world of men, no finite per- 
son fills up the hungry heart, so he turns to the 
Infinite Object of affection, to the great Mother of 
mankind ; and in the sentiment of love he and his 
God are one. God's thought in his mind, God's 
justice in his conscience, God's love in his heart, — 
why should not he be blessed ? 



136 



LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



Ill mankind, as in a faithful man, there has been 
the same enhancement of the power to love. Al- 
ready Affection begins to legislate, even to adminis- 
ter the laws of love. Long ago you see intimation 
of this in the institutes of Moses and Menu. " The 
qualitative precedes the quantitative," as twilight 
precedes day. Slowly vengeance fades out of 
human institutions, slowly love steals in : — the 
wounded soldier must be healed, and paid, his 
widow fed, and children comforted ; the slaves must 
be set free ; the yoke of kings and nobles must be 
made lighter, be broken, and thrown away ; all men 
must have their rights made sure ; the poor must be 
fed, must have his human right to a vote, to justice, 
truth, and love ; the ignorant must be educated, the 
State looking to it that no one straggles in the rear 
and so is lost ; the criminals — I mean the little 
criminals committing petty crimes — must be in- 
structed, healed, and manlified ; the lunatic must be 
restored to his intellect; the blind, the deaf and 
dumb, the idiots, must be taught, and all mankind 
be blessed. The attempt to banish war out of the 
world, odium from theology, capital punishment out 
of the State, the Devil and his hell from the Chris- 
tian mythology, — the effort to expunge hate from 
the popular notion of God, and fear from our 
religious consciousness, — all this shows the growth 
of love in the spirit of men. A few men see that 



LOYE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 



137 



while ir-religion is fear of a devil, religion is love : 
one half is piety, — the love of God as truth, justice, 
love, as Infinite Deity; the rest is morality, — self- 
love, and the love of man, a service of God by the 
normal use, development, and enjoyment of every 
limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every 
particle of power we possess over matter or over 
man. A few men see that God is love, and makes 
the world of love as substance, from love as motive, 
and for love as end. 

Human nature demands the triumph of pure, dis- 
interested love at last ; the nature of God is warrant 
that what is promised in man's nature shall be ful- 
filled in his development. Human nature is human 
destiny; God's nature, universal Providence. The 
mind tells us of truth which will prevail ; conscience, 
of justice sure to conquer; the heart gives us the 
prophecy of infinite love certain to triumph. One 
day there shall be no fear before men, no fear before 
God, no tyrant in society, no Devil in theology, no 
hell in the mythology of men ; love and the God of 
love shall take their place. Hitherto Jesus is an ex- 
ceptional man, the man of love ; Csesars and Alex- 
anders are instantial men, men of force and fight. 
One day this will be inverted, these conquerors swept 
off and banished, the philanthropists become com- 
mon, the kingdom of hate forgot in the common- 
wealth of love. Here is work for you and me to do ; 
12* 



138 LOVE AND THE AFFECTIONS. 

for our affectional piety, assuming its domestic, 
social, national, universal form, will bless us with its 
delight, and then go forth to bless mankind ; and 
long after you and I shall have gone home to the 
God we trust, our affectional piety shall be a senti- 
ment living in the hearts of men ; — yes, a power in 
the world to bless mankind for ever and ever. 

" Serene will be our days and bright, 
And happy will our nature be, 
When love is an unerring light, 
And joy its own security. 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Even now, who, not unwisely bold, 
Live in the spirit of this creed, 

Yet find that other strength, according to their need." 



V. 



OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



Worship the lord in the beauty of holiness. — Ps. xxix. 2. 

The mind converses with things indirectly, by 
means of the senses ; with ideas directly, indepen- 
dent of the senses, by spiritual intuition, whereto 
the senses furnish only the occasion, not the power, 
of knowledge ; so the mind arrives at truth, in 
various forms or modes, rests contented therein, 
and has joy in the love thereof. Conscience is 
busied with rules of right, by direct intuition 
learns the moral law of the universe as it is writ 
in human nature, — outward experience furnishing 
only the occasion, not the power, of knowing 
right, — arrives at justice, rests contented therein, 
and has its joy in the love thereof. The affec- 
tions deal with persons, whom it is their function 
to love, travel ever on to wider and wider spheres, 
joying in the men they love, but always seeking 



140 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



the perfect object with which they may be con- 
tented and have the absolute joy of the heart. 
To think truth, to will justice, to feel love, is the 
highest act respectively of the intellectual, moral, 
and affectional powers of man, which seek the 
absolutely true, just, and lovely, as the object of 
their natural desire. 

The soul has its own functions. God is the 
object thereof. As the mind and conscience by 
their normal activity bring truth and justice to 
human consciousness, so the soul makes us con- 
scious of God. 

We see what intellectual, moral, and affectional 
creations have come from the action of the mind, 
the conscience, and the heart of man ; we see the 
human use thereof and joy therein. But the re- 
ligious faculty has been as creative and yet more 
powerful, overmastering all the other powers of 
man. The profoundest study of man's affairs, or 
the hastiest glance thereat, shows the power of the 
soul for good and ill. The phenomena of man's 
religious history are as varied and important as 
they are striking. The surface of the world is 
dotted all over with the temples which man has 
built in his acts of reverence ; religious sentiments 
and ideas are deeply ploughed into the history of 
every tribe that has occupied time or peopled 
space. Consider mankind as one man, immortal 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 141 



and not growing old, universal history as his biog- 
raphy; study the formation of his religious con- 
sciousness, the gradual growth of piety in all its 
forms, normal or monstrous ; note his stumblings 
in the right way, his wanderings in the wrong, his 
penitence, his alarm and anxiety, his remorse for 
sin, his successive attainments of new truth, new 
justice, and new love, the forms in which he 
expresses his inward experience, — and what a 
strange, attractive spectacle this panorama of man's 
religious history presents to the thoughtful man. 

The religious action of a child begins early ; 
but like all early activity it is unconscious. We 
cannot remember that ; we can only recollect what 
we have known in the form of consciousness, or, 
at best, can only dimly remember what lay dimly 
and half conscious in us, though the effects thereof 
may be as lasting as our mortal life. You see the 
tendency to the superhuman in quite little chil- 
dren asking, " But who made God ? " the child's 
causality heedlessly leaping at the Infinite, he 
having a dim sentiment of the Maker of all itself 
unmade. You have seen little babies, early de- 
prived of their mother, involuntarily and by instinct 
feeling with their ill-shapen mouths after what 
nature provided for their nourishment. So in our 
childhood as involuntarily and instinctively do we 



142 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



feel with our soul after the Infinite God, often, 
alas ! to be beguiled by our nurses with some sop 
of a deity which fills our mouth for the time and 
keeps us from perishing. Perhaps a few of you 
remember a time when you had a sentiment — it 
was more a feeling than a thought — of a vague, 
dim, mysterious somewhat, which lay at the bot- 
tom of all things, was above all, about all, and in 
all, which you could not comprehend nor yet 
escape from. You seemed a part of it, or it of 
you; you wondered that you could not see with 
your eyes, nor hear with your ears, nor touch with 
your hands, what you yet felt and longed after 
with such perplexity of indistinctness. Some- 
times you loved it ; sometimes you feared. You 
dared not name it, or if you did, no one word was 
name enough for so changeable a thing. Now 
you felt it in the sunshine, then in the storm ; now 
it gave life, then it took life away. You con- 
nected it with all that was strange and uncom- 
mon ; now it was a great loveliness, then an ugli- 
ness of indefinite deformity. In a new place you 
missed it at first ; but it soon came back, travelling 
with the child, a constant companion at length. 

All men do not remember this, I think; only a 
few, in whom religious consciousness began early. 
But we have all of us been through this nebulous 
period of religious history, when the soul had 



CONSCIOUS "RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



143 



emotions for which the mind could not frame 
adequate ideas. 

You see the same phenomena drawn on a 
large scale in the history of ancient nations, 
whose monuments still attest these facts of con- 
sciousness ; you find nations at this day still in 
this nebulous period of religion, the Divine not yet 
resolved to Deity. Sphinxes and pyramids are 
fossil remains of old facts of consciousness which 
you and I and every man have reproduced. Sav- 
ages are baby nations, feeling after God, and trying 
tp express with their reflective intellect the imme- 
diate emotions of the soul. When language is a 
clumsy instrument, men try to carve in stone what 
they fail to express in speech. Is the soul directly 
conscious of a superhuman power ? they seek to 
legitimate the feeling in the mind, and so translate 
it to a thought ; at least they legitimate it to the 
senses, and make it a thing. This vague, myste- 
rious, superhuman something, before it is solidified 
into deity, let me call The Divine. Man does not 
know what it is. " It is not myself," says he. 

AYhat is it, then ? Some outward thing ? " He 
takes the outward thing which seems most won- 
drous to himself, — a reptile, beast, bird, insect ; an 
element, the wind, the lightning, the sun, the moon, 
a planet, or a star. Outward things embody his 
inward feeling ; but while there are so many ele- 



144 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



ments of confusion within him, no one embodiment 
is enough ; he must have many, each one a step 
beyond the other. His feeling becomes profounder, 
his thought more clear. At length he finds that 
man is more mighty than the elements, and seeks 
to consolidate the Divine in man, and has personifi- 
cations thereof, instead of his primitive embodi- 
ments in Nature. Then his feeling of the Divine 
becomes an idea of Deity ; he has his personal 
gods, with all the accidents of human personality, — 
the passions, feelings, thoughts, mistakes, and all 
the frailties of mortal men. 

Age after age this work goes on ; the human 
idea of God has its metempsychosis, and transmi- 
grates through many a form, rising higher at every 
step until this day. In studying mathematics man 
has used for counters the material things of earth, 
has calculated by the help of pebbles from the 
beach, learned the decimal system from his ten 
fingers, and wonders of abstract science from the 
complicated diagrams of the sky. So he has used 
reptiles, beasts, and all the elements and orbs of 
nature, in studying his sentiment of God, transfer- 1 
ing each excellence of Nature to the Divine, and 
then each excellence of man. Nature is the rosary 
of man's prayer. The successive embodiments 
and personifications of God in matter, animals, 
or men were in religion what the hypotheses of 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 145 

Thales and Ptolemy, Galileo and Kepler, were in 
science, — helps to attain a more general form of 
truth. Every idol-fetish, every embodiment of a 
conception of God in matter, every .personification 
thereof in man, has been a step forward in relig- 
ions progress. The grossest fetichism is only the 
early shoot from the instinctive seed, one day to 
blossom into the idea of the Infinite God. The 
confusion of past and present mythologies is not 
only a witness to the confusion in the religious 
consciousness of men, but the outward expression 
helps men to understand the inward fact, and so to 
bring truth out of error. 

The religious history of mankind could not have 
been much different from what it has been ; the 
margin for human caprice is not a very wide one. 
All mankind had the same process to pass through. 
The instinct of development in the human race is 
immensely strong, even irrepressible ; checked here, 
in another place it puts out a limb. The life of 
mankind is continual growth. There is a special 
progress of the intellectual, moral, affectional, and 
religious faculties ; so a general progress of man ; 
with that, a progress in the ideas which men form 
of God. Each step seems to us unavoidable and 
not to be dispensed with. Once unconscious rev- 
erence of the Divine was all man had attained 
to ; next he reached the worship of the Deity in the 
13 



146 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



form of material or animal nature then personified in 
man. Let us not libel the human race : we are 
babies before we are men. " Live and learn " ap- 
plies to mankind, as to Joseph and Jane. 

You and I are born as far from pure religion as 
the first men, and have passed over the same ground 
which the human race has painfully trod, only man- 
kind has been before us, and made a road to travel 
on; so we journey more swiftly; and in twenty or 
thirty years an ordinary man accomplishes what it 
took the human race five or six hundred generations 
to achieve. But hitherto the majority of Christians 
have not attained unity, or even concord, in their 
conception of the Deity. There is a God. a Christ, 
a Holy Ghost,, and a Devil, with angels and saints, 
demons and damned ; it takes all these to represent 
the popular ecclesiastical conception of the Deity : 
and a most heterogeneous mixture of contradictions 
and impossibilities do they make. The Devil is part 
of the popular Godhead. Here and there is a man 
conscious of God as Infinite ; but such are only 
exceptional men, and accordingly disowned as here- 
tics, condemned, but no longer burnt, as of old time. 

It is plain that the religious faculty is the strong- 
est spiritual power in the constitution of man. Ac- 
cordingly, what is called religion is always one of 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 147 



the mightiest forces in the world of men. It over- 
rides the body, mutilates every instinct, and hews 
off every limb ; it masters the intellect, the con- 
science, and the affections. Lightning shows us the 
power of electricity, shattering that it may reach its 
end, and shattering what it reaches ; the power of 
the religious faculty hitherto has been chiefly shown 
in this violent exhibition. A crusade is only a long 
thunderstorm of the religious forces. 

In the greater part of the world, men who speak in 
the name of God are looked on with more reverence 
than any other. So every tyrant seeks to get the 
priesthood on his side. Hard Napoleon got the 
Pope to assist at the imperial coronation ; even the 
cannons must yield to the Cross. All modern wick- 
edness must be banked up with Christianity. If the 
State of the Philistines wishes to sow some emi- 
nently wicked seed, it ploughs with the heifer of the 
Church. 

A nation always prepares itself for its great works 
with consecration and prayer; both the English and 
American revolutions are examples of this. The 
religious sentiment lies exceeding deep in the heart 
of mankind. Even to-day the nations look on men 
who die for their country as a sacrifice offered to 
God. No government is so lasting as that based on 
religious sentiments and ideas ; with the mass of 
men the State is part of the Church, and politics a 



148 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



national sacrament. Nothing so holds a nation to- 
gether as unity of religious conviction. Men love to 
think their rulers have a religious sanction. " Kings 
rule by divine right," says the monarchist ; " Civil 
government is of God." quoth the Puritan. The 
mass of men love to spread acts of religion along 
their daily life, having the morning sacrament for 
birth, the evening sacrament for death, and the noon- 
day sacrament of marriage for the mature beauty of 
maid and man. Thus in all the sects, the morning, 
the evening, and the noon of life are connected with 
sentiments and ideas of religion. In New England 
we open a town-meeting, a banquet, or a court with 
prayer to God. 

You see the strength of the religious instinct in 
the power of the sacred class, which has existed in 
all nations, while passing from the savage state to 
the highest civilization. — a power which only passes 
away when the class which bears the name ceases 
to represent the religious feeling and thought of the 
nation, and merely keeps the traditions and ceremo- 
nies of old time. So long as the priests represent 
God to the people, they are the strongest class. 
"What are the armies of Saul, if Samuel pleases to 
anoint a shepherd-lad for king ? You see examples 
of this power of the sacred class in Egypt, in India, 
in Judea, in Greece and Rome, before the philoso- 
pher outgrew the priest. You see it in Europe dur- 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 149 



ing the Middle Ages ; what monuments thereof are 
left, marking all the land from Byzantium to Upsala 
with convents, basilicas, minster, cathedral, dome, 
and spire ! At this day the Mormons, on the bor- 
ders of American civilization, gather together the 
rudest white men of the land, and revive the ancient 
priestly power of darker times, a hierarchic despot- 
ism under a republic. In such communities the 
ablest men and the most ambitious form a sacred 
class ; the Church offers the fairest field for activity. 
There religion is obviously the most powerful form 
of power. Men who live in a city where the tavern 
is taller, costlier, more beautiful and permanent, than 
the temple, and the tavern-keeper thought a more 
important man than the minister of religion, who is 
only a temple-keeper now, can hardly understand 
the period when such works as the Cathedral at 
Milan or the Duorao at Venice got built : but a 
Mormon city reveals the same state of things ; Nau- 
voo and Deseret explain Jerusalem and Carnak. 

The religious faculty has overmastered all others ; 
the mind is reckoned " profane " in comparison. 
Does the priest tell men in its name to accept what 
contradicts the evidence of the senses, and all hu- 
man experience, millions bow down before the 
Grand Lama or the Pope. It is the faith of the 
Christian world, that a Galilean woman bore the 
Almighty God in her bosom, and nursed Him at her 
13* 



150 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

breast. Augustine and Aquinas stooped their proud 
intellects and accepted the absurdity. - The priests 
have told the people that three persons are one God, 
or three Gods one person, — that the world was cre- 
ated in six days ; the people give up their intellect 
and try to believe the assertion, Grotius and Leibnitz 
assenting to the tale. Every thing written in the 
Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, is thus 
made to pass current with their respective worship- 
pers. In the name of religion men sacrifice reason. 
St. James says, " Is any sick among you ? let him 
call for the elders of the Church ; and let them pray 
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the 
Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and 
the Lord shall raise him up." Thousands of men, 
in the name of religion, believe that this medical ad- 
vice of a Hebrew fisherman was given by the infalli- 
ble inspiration of God ; and it is clerically thought 
wicked and blasphemous to speak of it as I do this 
day. I only mention these facts to show the natural 
strength of the religious instinct, working in a per- 
verted and unnatural form, and against the natural 
action of the mind. 

In like manner religion is made to silence the 
moral faculties. The Hebrews will kill the Canaan- 
ites by thousands ; Catholic Spaniards will build 
the Inquisition for their countrymen ; English Prot- 
estants, under the bloody Elizabeth, will dip their 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



151 



hands in their Catholic brothers' blood ; Puritan 
Boston has had her Anos da Fe, hanging Quakers 
for " non-resistance n and the i; inner light,'' or 
witches for a compact with the Devil." Do we 
not still hang murderers throughout all Christen- 
dom as an act of worship ? This is not done as 
political economy, but as " Divine service ; " not for 
the conversion of man, but in the name of God, — 
one of the few relics of human sacrifice. Reason 
is carnal," says one priest, — men accept a palpable 
absurdity as a " revealed truth;"' " Conscience must 
not be trusted,'' says another, — and human sacri- 
fice is readily assented to. Nothing is so unjust, 
but men, meaning to be pious, will accept and per- 
form it. if commanded in the name of religion. In 
such cases even interest is a feeble ally to con- 
science, and money is sometimes sacrificed in New 
England. 

The religious instinct is thus made to trample on 
the affections. At the priest's command, men re- 
nounce the dearest joys of the heart, degrading 
woman to a mere medium of posterity, or scoffing 
at nature, and vowing shameful oaths of celibacy. 
Puritan mothers feared lest they should "love their 
children too much." How many a man has made 
his son •• pass through the fire unto Moloch ? " The 
Protestant thinks it was an act of religion in Abra- 
ham to sacrifice his only son unto Jehovah ; the 



152 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



Catholic still justifies the St. Bartholomew mas- 
sacre. Mankind did not shrink at human sacrifice 
which was demanded in the name of religion ter- 
ribly perverted. These facts are enough to show 
that the religious faculty is the strongest in human 
nature, and easily snaps all ties which bind us to 
the finite world, making the lover forswear his bride, 
and even the mother forget her child. 

See what an array of means is provided for the 
nurture and development of the religious instinct, — 
provided by God in the constitution of men and 
of the universe. All these things about us, things 
magnificently great, things elegantly little, contin- 
ually impress mankind. Even to the barbarian 
Nature reveals a mighty power and a wondrous 
wisdom, and continually points to God. I do not 
wonder that men worshipped the several things of 
the world, at first reverencing the Divine in the 
emmet or the crocodile. The world of matter is a 
revelation of fear to the savage in northern climes : 
he trembles at his deity throned in ice and snow. 
The lightning, the storm, the earthquake, startle the 
rude man, and he sees the Divine in the extraor- 
dinary. 

The grand objects of Nature perpetually con- 
strain men to think of their Author. The Alps are 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 153 



the great altar of Europe; the nocturnal sky has 
been to mankind the dome of a temple, starred all 
over with admonitions to reverence, trust, and love. 
The Scriptures for the human race are writ in earth 
and heaven. Even now we say, " An undevout 
astronomer is mad." What a religious mosaic is 
the surface of the earth, — green with vegetable 
beauty, animated with such swarms of life. No 
organ or Pope's Miserere touches my heart like the 
sonorous swell of the sea, and the ocean wave's im- 
measurable laugh. To me, the works of men who 
report the aspects of Nature, like Humboldt, and of 
such as Newton and Laplace, who melt away the 
facts, and leave only the laws, the forces of Nature, 
the ideas and ghosts of things, are like tales of a 
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or poetical biogra- 
phies of a saint ; they stir religious feelings, and I 
commune with the Infinite. 

This effect is not produced on scholarly men so 
much as on honest and laborious mankind, all the 
world over. Nature is man's religious book, with 
lessons for every day. In cities men tread on an 
artificial ground of brick or stone, breathe an un- 
natural air, see the heavens only a handful at a 
time, think the gas-lights better than the stars, and 
know little how the stars themselves keep the police 
of the sky. Ladies and gentlemen in towns see 
Nature only at second hand. It is hard to deduce 



154 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



God from a brick pavement. Yet ever and anon 
the mould comes out green and natural on the walls, 
and through the chinks of the sidewalks bursts up 
the life of the world in many a little plant, which to 
the microscopic eye of science speaks of the pres- 
ence of the same Power that slowly elaborates a 
solar system and a universe. In the country men 
and women are always in the presence of Nature, 
and feel its impulse to reverence and trust. Every 
year the old world puts on new bridal beauty, and 
celebrates its Whitsunday, — each bush putting its 
glory on. Spring is our Dominica in Albis. Is not 
autumn a long All-Saints' day ? The harvest is 
Hallowmass to mankind. How men have marked 
each annual crisis of the year, — the solstice and the 
equinox, — and celebrate religious festivals thereon! 
The material world is the element of communion 
between man and God. To heedful men God 
preaches on every mount, utters beatitudes in each 
little flower of spring. 

Our own nature also reminds us of God. 
Thoughtful men are conscious of their dependence, 
their imperfection, their finiteness, and naturally turn 
to the Independent, the Perfect, the Infinite. The 
events of life, its joys and its sorrows, have a natural 
tendency to direct the thoughts to the good Father 
of us all. Religious emotions spring up spontane- 
ously at each great event in the lives of earnest men. 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 155 

When I am sick I become conscious of the Infinite 
Mother in whose lap I lay my weary head. The 
lover's eyes see God beyond the maid he loves ; 
Heaven speaks out of the helpless face which the 
young mother presses to her bosom ; each new child 
connects its parents with the eternal duration of 
human kind. Who can wait on the ebb and flow 
of mortal life in a friend, and not return to Him who 
holds that ocean also in the hollow of his hand ! 
The old man looking for the last time upon the sun 
turns his children's face towards the Sun which 
never sets. Even in cities men do not pause at a 
funeral or look on a grave without a thought of the 
eternal life beyond the tomb, and the dependence of 
rich and poor on the God who is father of body and 
soul. The hearse obstructs the omnibus of com- 
merce, and draws the eyes of even the silly and the 
vain and empty creatures who buzz out their ephem- 
eral phenomena in wealthy towns, the butterflies of 
this garden of bricks, and forces them to confront 
one reality of life, and reverence, though only with 
a shudder, the Author of all. The undertaker is a 
priest to preach terror, if no more, to the poor 
flies of metropolitan frivolity, reminding them at 
least of the worm. 

The outward material world forms a temple where 
all invites us to reverence the Soul which inspires 
it with life ; the spiritual powers within are all in- 



156 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AXD THE SOUL. 



stinctively astir with feelings infinite. Thus mate- 
rial nature joins with human nature in natural fel- 
lowship ; outward occasions and inward means of 
piety are bountifully given, and man is led to de- 
velop his religious powers. The soul of man cannot 
well be still ; religion has always had a powerful 
activity in the world, and a great influence upon the 
destiny of mankind. The soul has been as active as 
the sense, and left its monuments. 

An element thus powerful, thus well appointed 
with outward and with inward helps, must have a 
purpose for the individual and the race commensu- 
rate with its natural power. The affections tell me 
it is not good for man to be alone in the body with- 
out a friend ; the soul as imperatively informs us 
that we cannot well be alone in the spirit without a 
consciousness of God. If the religious faculty has 
overpowered all others, and often trod them under- 
foot, its very power shows for what great good to 
mankind it was invested with this formidable force. 
It will act jointly or alone ; if it have not its proper 
place in the mass of men, working harmoniously 
with the intellect, the conscience, and the affections, 
then it will tyrannize as a brute instinct, lusting 
after God, and, like a river that bursts its bounds, 
sweep off the holy joys of- men before its desolating 
flood. 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 157 

The mind may work without a corresponding ac- 
tion of the conscience or the heart. You can com- 
prehend the worth of a man all head, with no sense 
of right, no love of men, with nothing but a demon- 
brain. Conscience may act with no corresponding 
life of the affections and the mind. You can under- 
stand the value of a man all conscience and will, — 
nothing but an incarnate moral law, the " categorical 
Imperative " exhibited in the flesh, with no wisdom 
and no love. A life domineered over by conscience 
is unsatisfying, melancholy, and grim. The affec- 
tions may also have a development without the 
moral and the mental powers. But what is a man 
domineered over by his heart; with no justice, no 
wisdom, nothing but a lump of good-nature, partial 
and silly? It is only the rareness of such phe- 
nomena that makes them bearable. Truth, justice, 
love, — it is not good for them to be alone ; each 
loses two thirds of the human power when it expels 
the sister virtues from it. What God has joined 
must not be put asunder. 

The religious faculty may be perverted, severed 
from the rest and made to act alone, with no cor- 
responding action of the mind, the conscience, and 
the heart. Attempts are often made to produce this 
independent development of the soul. It is no new 
thing to seek to develop piety while you omit its 
several elements, the intellectual love of truth, the 
14 



158 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



moral love of justice, and the affectional love of 
men. But in such a case what is the value of the 
"piety" thus produced? The soul acting without 
the mind goes to superstition and bigotry. It has 
its conception of God, but of a God that is foolish 
and silly. Reason will be thought carnal, science 
dangerous, and a doubt an impiety ; the greatest 
absurdities will be taught in the name of religion ; 
the philosophy of some half-civilized, but God-fear- 
ing people, will be put upon the minds of men as 
the word of God ; the priest will hate the philoso- 
pher, and the philosopher the priest; men of able in- 
tellect will flee off and loathe ecclesiastical piety. 
If the churches will have a religion without philoso- 
phy, scholars will have a philosophy without relig- 
ion. The Roman Church forbid science, burnt Jor- 
dano Bruno, and reduced Galileo to silence and 
his knees. So much the worse for the Church. 
The French philosophy of the last century, its En- 
cyclopaedia of scoffs at religion, were the unavoid- 
able counterpart. Voltaire and Diderot took ven- 
geance for the injustice done to their philosophic 
forerunners. The fagots of the Middle Ages got 
repaid by the fiery press of the last generation. 

You may try and develop the soul to the neglect 
of conscience : — your Antinomian will recognize no 
moral law : " All things are permissible to the elect ; 
let them do what they will, they cannot sin, for 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



159 



they are born of God ; the moral law is needless 
under the Gospel," says he. Religion will be made 
the pander of wrong, and priests will pimp for 
respectable iniquity. God is thus represented as 
unjust, partial, cruel, and full of vengeance. The 
most unjust things will be demanded in his name ; 
the laws and practices of a barbarous nation will be 
ascribed to God, and. men told to observe and keep 
them. Religion will aim to conserve the ritual bar- 
barities of ruder times. Moral works will be 
thought hostile to piety, — goodness regarded as of 
no value, rather as proof that a man is not under 
the " covenant of grace," but only of works. Con- 
science will be declared an uncertain guide. No 
" higher law " will be allowed in religion, — only the 
interest of the politician and the calculation of the 
merchant must bear rule in the State. The whim 
of some priest, a new or an old traditionary whim, 
must be the rule in the Church. It will then be 
taught that religion is for the Sunday and " holy 
communion ; " business for the week, and daily life. 
The "most respectable churches" will be such as do 
nothing to make the world a better place, and men 
and women fitter to live in it. The catechism will 
have nothing to do with the conduct, nor prayers 
with practice. But if the churches will have relig- 
ion without morals, many a good and conscientious 
man will go to the opposite extreme, and have 



160 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



morals without religion, — will jeer and mock at all 
complete and conscious piety ; eminently moral men 
will flee off from the churches, which will be left 
with their idle mummeries and vain conceits. 

Men sometimes seek to develop the religious ele- 
ment while they depress the affection al. Then they 
promote fanaticism — hate before God, which so 
often has got organized in the world. Then God is 
represented as jealous, partial, loving only a few, 
and of course Himself unlovely. He sits as a tyrant 
on the throne of the world, and with his rod of iron 
rules the nations whom he has created for his glory, 
to damn for his caprice. He is represented as hav- 
ing a little, narrow heaven, where he will gather a 
few of his children, whining and dawdling out a life 
of eternal indolence ; and a great, wide hell, fall of 
men, demons, and torments lasting for ever and 
ever. Then, in the name of God, men are bid to 
have no fellowship with unbelievers, no sympathy 
with sinners. Nay, you are bidden to hate your 
brethren of a different mode of religious belief. This 
fanaticism organizes itself, now into brief and tem- 
porary activity, to persecute a saint, or to stone a 
philanthopist ; now into permanent institutions for 
the defence of heathenism, Judaism, Mohammedan- 
ism, or Christianity. The fires in which Catholics 
and Protestants have burnt their brother Christians, 
the dreadful tortures which savage heathens have in- 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 161 

flicted on the followers of Jesus, have all been pre- 
pared by the same cause, hatred in the name of 
God. It is this which has made many a temporary 
hell on earth, and fancied and taught an eternal hell 
beneath it. Brief St. Bartholomew massacres, long 
and lasting crusades against Albigenses or Saracens, 
permanent Inquisitions, laws against unbelievers, 
atheists, quakers, deists, and Christians, all spring 
from this same wantonness of the religious senti- 
ment rioting with ungodly passions of the flesh. 
The malignant priest looks out of the storm of his 
hate, and smites men in the name of religion and of 
God. But then the affectionate man turns off from 
the God who is "a consuming fire," from the "relig- 
ion" that scorches and burns up the noblest emo- 
tions of mankind, and, if others will have a worship 
without love in the worshippers or the worshipped, 
he will have love without religion, and philanthropy 
without God. So, in the desert, the Arab sees the 
whirlwind coming with its tornado of fiery sand, 
and hastens from its track, or lies down, he and his 
camels, till the horrid storm has spent its rage and 
passed away ; then he rises and resumes his peace- 
ful pilgrimage with thanks to God. 

How strong is the family instinct ! how beautiful 
is it when, passion and affection blending together, 
it joins man and maid into one complete and perfect 
solidarity of human life, each finding wholeness and 
14* 



162 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

enjoyment while seeking only to delight! What 
beautiful homes are built on marriages like that ! 
what families of love are born and bred therein ! but 
take away the affection, the self-denial, the mutual 
surrender, aggravate the instinctive love to the un- 
natural selfishness of lust seeking its own enjoyment, 
heedless of its victim, and how hateful is the beastly 
conjunction of David, Solomon, Messallina, Moham- 
med, of Gallic Cassanova, or Moscovian Catharine. 
Religion bereft of love to men becomes more hateful 
yet, — a lusting after God. It has reddened with 
blood many a page of human history, and made the 
ideal torments of hell a naming fact in every Chris- 
tian land. The Catharines of such a religion, the 
Cassanovas of the soul, are to me more hideous 
than Bacchanalians of the flesh. Let us turn off 
our eyes from a sight so foul. 

Piety of mind, the love of truth, is only a frag- 
ment of piety ; piety of conscience, the love of right, 
is also fragmentary ; so is love of men, piety of the 
heart. Each is a beautiful fragment, all three not 
a whole piety. We want to unite them all with the 
consciousness of God, into a complete, perfect, and 
total religion, the piety of mind and conscience, 
heart and soul, — to love God with all the faculties, 
— to love Him as truth, as justice, as love, as God, 
who unites in Himself infinite truth, infinite justice, 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



163 



infinite love, and is the Father of all. We need to 
do this consciously, to be so wonted to thus loving 
Him, that it is done spontaneously, without effort, 
and yet not merely by instinct ; done personally, not 
against our own consent. Then we want to express 
this fourfold total piety by our outward morality, in 
its natural forms and various degrees. 

I mentioned, that in human history the religious 
faculty had often tyrannized over the other powers 
of men ; I think it should precede them in its de- 
velopment, should be the controlling power in every 
man, the universal force which sways the several 
parts. In the history of man the soul has done so, 
but in most perverse forms of action. In the mass 
of men the religious element is always a little in 
advance of all the rest. Last Sunday I said that 
the affections often performed an idealizing and 
poetizing function in men who found it not in the 
intellect or the moral sense. In the vast majority of 
men it is religion that thus idealizes and adorns 
their life, and gives the rude worshipper an intimate 
gladness and delight beyond the reach of art. The 
doctrine of Fate and Foreordination idealizes the 
life of the Mohammedan; he feels elevated to the 
rank of an instrument of God ; he has an inflexible 
courage, and a patience which bears all that courage 
cannot overcome. The camel-driver of the Arabian 
prophet rejoiced in this intimate connection with 



164 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



God, a spoke in the wheel of the Unalterable. The 
thought that Jehovah watched over Israel with spe- 
cial love, consoled the Hebrews who hung their 
harps on the willows of Babylon, and sat down and 
wept ; it brought out of their hearts stories like that 
of Jonah, Esther, and Daniel, and the sweet Psalms 
of comfort which the world will not forget to sing. 
How it has sustained the nation, wandering, exiled 
and hated, in all the corners of the world! The 
God of Jacob is their refuge and the Holy One of 
Israel the joy of their hearts. Faith in God sus- 
tained and comforted our fathers here in New Eng- 
land. Their affections went wandering over the 
waters to many a pleasant home in the dear old 
island of the sea, and a tear fell on the snow, at the 
thought that, far over the waters, the first violet was 
fragrant on a mother's grave ; but the consciousness 
of God lit a smile in the Puritan's heart which 
chased the tear from his manly cheek. 

The thought that God sees us, knows us, loves us, 
idealizes the life of all religious men. How it blunts 
the edge of pain, takes away the sting of disappoint- 
ment, abates the bitterness of many a sorrowful cup 
which we are called to drink! If you are sure of 
God, is there any thing which you cannot bear ? 
The belief in immortality is so intimately connected 
with the development of religion, that no nation ever 
doubted of eternal life. How that idealizes and em- 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 165 

bellishes all our daily doing and suffering ! What a 
power is there that hangs over me, within a day's 
march perhaps, nay, within an easy walk of an hour, 
or a minute it may be, certainly not far off, its gates 
wide open night and day ! The weary soul flees 
thither right often. Poor, weary, worn-out millions, 
it is your heaven ! No king can shut you out. The 
tyrants, shooting their victim's body, shoot his soul 
into the commonwealth of heaven. The martyr 
knows it, and laughs at the bullets which make an 
involuntary subject of despotism an immortal repub- 
lican, giving him citizenship in the democracy of 
everlasting life. There the slave is free from his 
master ; the weary is at rest ; the needy has no want 
of bread ; all tears are wiped from every eye ; justice 
is done ; souls dear to ours are in our arms once 
more ; the distractions of life are all over ; no injus- 
tice, no sorrow, no fear. That is the great comfort 
with the mass of mankind, — the most powerful 
talisman which enchants them of their weary woe. 
Men sing Anacreontic odes, amid wine and women, 
and all the voluptuousness of art, buying a tran- 
sient jollity of the flesh ; but the Methodist finds poe- 
try in his mystic hymn to take away the grief of a 
wound and leave no poison in its place. The rud- 
est Christian, with a real faith in immortal life, has 
a means of adorning the world which puts to shame 
the poor finery of Nicholas and Nebuchadnezzar. 



166 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AXD THE SOUL. 



What are the prizes of wealth, of fame, of genius, 
nay, of affection, compared with what we all antici- 
pate erelong ? The worst man that ever lived may 
find delight overmastering terror here. " I am 
wicked," he may say ; " God knows how I became 
so ; his infinite love will one day save me out of my 
bitterness and my woe!" I once knew a man tor- 
mented with a partner, cruel and hard-hearted, inge- 
nious only to afflict. In the midst of her torment he 
delighted to think of the goodness of God, and of 
the delights of heaven, and in the pauses of her 
tongue dropped to a heaven of lovely dreams un- 
sullied by any memory of evil words. 

Religion does not produ6e its fairest results in 
persons of small intellectual culture ; yet there it 
often spreads a charm and a gladness which nothing 
else can give. I have known men, and still oftener 
women, nearly all of whose culture had come through 
their religious activity. Religion had helped their 
intellect, their conscience, even their affections ; by 
warming the whole ground of their being, had quick- 
ened the growth of each specific plant thereof. 
Young observers are often amazed at this, not 
knowing then the greener growth and living power 
of a religious soul. In such persons, spite of lack of 
early intellectual culture, and continual exclusion 
from the common means of refinement, you find 
piety without narrowness, zeal without bigotry, and 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 167 

trust in God with no cant. Their world of observa- 
tion was not a wide world, not much varied, not 
rich ; but their religious experience was deep, their 
consciousness of divine things extended high. They 
were full of love and trust in God. Religion was 
the joy of their heart, and their portion for ever. 
They felt that God was about them, immanent in 
matter, within not less, dwelling in then spirit, a 
present help in their hour of need, which was their 
every hour. Piety was their only poetry ; out of 
ignorance, out of want, out of pain, which lay heavy 
about them, — a triple darkness that covered the 
people, — they looked up to heaven, and saw the 
star of everlasting life, which sent its mild beams 
into their responsive soul. Dark without, it was 
all-glorious within. Men with proud intellect go 
haughtily by these humble souls ; but Mohammeds, 
Luthers, are born of such a stock, and it is from 
these little streams that the great ocean of religion is 
filled full. 

Yet it is not in cases like these that you see the 
fairest effects of religion. The four prismatic rays 
of piety must be united into one natural and four- 
fold beam of light, to shine with all their beauty, 
all their power; then each is enhanced. I love truth 
the more for loving justice ; both the more for loving 
love ; all three the more, when I see them as forms 
of God ; and in a totality of religion I worship the 



168 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

Father, who is truth, justice, and love, who is the 
Infinite God. 

The affections want a person to cling to ; — my 
soul reveals to me God, without the limitations of 
human personality; Him I can love, and not be 
narrowed by my affections. If I love a limited 
object, I grow up to the bigness thereof, then stop ; 
it helps my growth no more. The finiteness of my 
friend admits no absolute affection. Partial love 
must not disturb the universal sweep of impersonal 
truth and justice. The object of the heart must not 
come between me and the object of mind or con- 
science, and enfeeble the man. But if you love the 
Infinite God, it is with all your faculties, which 
find their complete and perfect object, and you 
progressively grow up towards him, to be like him. 
The idea of God becomes continually more, your 
achievement of the divine becomes more. You 
love with no divided love ; there is no collision of 
faculties, the head forbidding what the soul com- 
mands, the heart working one way and the con- 
science another. The same Object corresponds to 
all these faculties, which love Him as truth, as jus- 
tice, as love, as God who is all in all ; one central 
sun balances and feeds with fire this system of har- 
monious orbs. 

Consider the power of religion in a man whose 
mind and conscience, heart and soul, are all well 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 169 



developed. He has these four forms of piety ; they 
all unite, each to all, and all to each. His mind 
gives him knowledge of truth, the necessary con- 
dition for the highest action of his conscience ; that 
furnishes him with the idea of justice, which is the 
necessary condition for the highest action of the 
affections ; they in their development extend to all in 
their wide love of men; this affords the necessary 
condition for the highest action of the soul, which 
can then love God with absolute love, and, joining 
with all the other activity of the man, helps the use, 
development, and enjoyment of every faculty. Then 
truth has lost its coldness ; justice is not hard and 
severe ; love is not partial, as when limited to 
family, tribe, or nation ; but, coextensive with jus- 
tice, applies to all mankind ; faith is not mystical or 
merely introversive and quietistic. This fourfold 
action joins in one unity of worship, in love of God, 
— love with the highest and conjoint action of all 
the faculties of man. Then love of the Infinite God 
is no mystical abstraction, no dreamy sentimental- 
ism, but the normal action of the entire man, every 
faculty seeking its finite contentment, and finding 
also its infinite satisfaction by feeling the life of God 
in the soul of man. 

In our time, as often before, attempts are making 
to cultivate the soul, in the narrowest way, without 

15 



170 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

developing the other parts of man's spiritual nature. 
The intellect is called "carnal," conscience "dan- 
gerous," and the heart " deceitful." We are told to 
trust none of these in matters of religion. Accord- 
ingly, ecclesiastical men complain that " science 
is not religious," because it breaks down the " ven- 
erable doctrines" of the Church, — because geolo- 
gists have swept away the flood, grammarians anni- 
hilated the tower of Babel, and physiologists brushed 
off the miracles of the Jews, the Greeks, the Hin- 
doos, and the Christians, to the same dust-hole of 
the ages and repository of rubbish. It is complained 
that " morality is not religious," because it refuses to 
be comforted with the forms of religious ceremony, 
and thinks " divine service " is not merely sitting in 
a church, or listening to even the wisest words. The 
churches complain also that " philanthropy is not re- 
ligious," but love of men dissuades us from love of 
God. The philanthropist looks out on the evils of 
society, — on the slavery whose symbol is the lash, 
and the slavery whose symbol is the dollar ; on the 
avarice, the intemperance,, the licentiousness of 
men ; and calls on mankind in the name of God to 
put away all this wickedness. The churches say : 
" Rather receive our sacraments, Religion has noth- 
ing to do with such matters." 

This being the case, men of powerful character 
no longer betake themselves to the Church as their 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



171 



fortress whence to assail the evils of the age, or as 
their hermitage wherein to find rest to their souls. 
In all England there are few men, I think, of first- 
rate ability who speak from a pulpit. Let me do no 
injustice to minds like three great men honoring her 
pulpits now, but has England a clerical scholar to 
rival the intellectual affluence of Hooker, and Bar- 
row, and Taylor, and Cudworth, and South ? The 
great names of English literature at this day, Car- 
lyle, Hallam, Macaulay, Mill, Grote, and the rest, 
seem far enough from the Church, or its modes of 
salvation. The counting-house sends out men to 
teach political economy, looking always to the 
kitchen of the nation, and thinking of the stomach 
of the people. Does the Church send out men of 
corresponding power to think of the soul of the na- 
tion, and teach the people political morality ? Was 
Bishop Butler the last of the great men who essayed 
to teach Britain from her established pulpit? Even 
Priestley has few successors in the ranks of religious 
dissent. The same may be said of Church poets : 
they are often well-bred ; what one of them is there 
that was well-born for his high vocation ? 

In the American Church there is the same famine 
of men. Edwards and Mayhew belonged to a race 
now extinct, — great men in pulpits. In our litera- 
ture there are names enough once clerical. The 
very fairest names on our little hill of the Muses are 



172 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

of men once clergymen. Channing is the only one 
in this country who continued thus to the end of 
life. A crowd of able men, with a mob of others, 
press into all departments of trade, into the profes- 
sion of the law, and the headlong race of American 
politics, — where a reputation is gained without a 
virtue or lost without a crime, — but no men of first- 
rate powers and attainments continue in the pulpit. 
Hence we have strong-minded men in business, in 
politics, and law, who teach men the measures which 
seem to suit the evanescent interests of the day, but 
few in pulpits, to teach men the eternal principles of 
justice, which really suit the present and also the 
everlasting interests of mankind. Hence no popular 
and deadly sin of the nation gets well rebuked by 
the Church of the Times. The dwarfs of the pulpit 
hide their diminished heads before the Anakim of 
politics and trade. The almighty dollar hunts wis- 
dom, justice, and philanthropy out of the American 
Church. It is only among the fanatical Mormons 
that the ablest men teach in the name of God. 

The same is mainly true of all Christendom. 
The Church which in her productive period had an 
Origen, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Jerome, an 
Aquinas, its Gregories and its Basils, had real saints 
and willing martyrs, in the nineteenth century can- 
not show a single mind which is a guide of the age. 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 173 

The great philosophers of Europe are far enough 
from Christian. 

It is, doubtless, a present misfortune that the posi- 
tions most favorable to religious influence are filled 
with feeble men, or such as care little for the welfare 
of mankind, — who have all of religion except its 
truth, its justice, its philanthropy, and its faith. 
Still, such is the fact just now ; a fact which shows 
plainly enough the position of what is popularly 
called " Christianity " in the world of men. The 
form of religion first proclaimed by the greatest re- 
ligious genius that ever lit the world, and sealed by 
his martyrdom, is now officially represented by men 
of vulgar talents, of vulgar aspirations, — to be rich, 
respectable, and fat, — and of vulgar lives. Hunkers 
of the Church claim exclusively to represent the mar- 
tyr of the Cross. A sad sight ! 

Yet still religion is a great power amongst men, 
spite of these disadvantages. It was never so great 
before ; for in the progressive development of man- 
kind the higher faculties acquire continually a 
greater and greater influence. If Christianity means 
what was true and good in the teaching and charac- 
ter of Jesus, then there was never so much of it in 
the world. Spite of the defalcation and opposition 
of the churches, there is a continual growth in all 
those four forms of piety. Under the direction of 
15* 



174 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



able men, all those fragments of religion are made 
ready in their several places. In the department of 
mind, see how much has been done in this last hun- 
dred years ; man has nearly doubled the intellectual 
property of the seventeenth century. The early his- 
tory of mankind is better understood now than by 
the nations who lived it. What discoveries of 
science in all that relates to the heavens, to the earth 
and its inhabitants, mineral, vegetable, animal, hu- 
man ! In the philosophy of man, how much has 
been done to understand his nature and his history ! 
In practical affairs, see what wonders have been 
wrought in a hundred years; look at England, 
France, Germany, and America, and see the power 
of the scientific head over the world of matter, the 
human power gained by better political organization 
of the tribes of men. 

In the department of conscience, see what a love 
of justice develops itself in all Christendom ; see the 
results of this for the last hundred years ; in the re- 
form of laws, of constitutions, in the great politi- 
cal, social, and domestic revolutions of our time. 
Men have clearer ideas of justice ; they would have 
a church without a bishop, a State without a king, 
society without a lord, and a family without a slave. 
From this troublesome conscience comes the uneasi- 
ness of the Christian world. A revolution is a na- 
tion's act of penitence, of resolution, and of prayer, 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AND THE SOUL. 175 

— its agony and bloody sweat. See what a love of 
freedom there is shaking the institutions of the aged 
world. Tyrannies totter before the invisible hand of 
Justice, which, to the terror of the oppressors, writes, 
" Weighed, and found wanting." So the despot 
trembles for his guilty throne ; the slave-driver be- 
gins to fear the God of the man he has kidnapped 
and enthralled. See the attempts making by the 
people to break down monopolies, to promote free- 
dom of intercourse between all nations of the earth. 
See woman assert her native rights, long held in 
abeyance by the superior vigor of the manly arm. 

In all that pertains to the affections, there has 
been a great advance. Love trave{s beyond the nar- 
row bounds of England and of Christendom. See 
the efforts making to free the slave ; to elevate the 
poor, — removing the causes of poverty by the char- 
ity that alleviates and the justice that cures ; to heal 
the drunkard of his fiery thirst ; to reform the crimi- 
nals whom once we only hung. The gallows must 
come down, the dungeon be a school for piety, not 
the den of vengeance and of rage. Great pains be- 
gin to be taken with the deaf and dumb, the blind, 
the insane ; even the idiot must be taught. Philan- 
thropic men, who are freedom to the slave, feet to 
the lame, eyes to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, 
would be also understanding to the fool. In what is 
idly called " an age of faith," the town council of 



176 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



Grenoble set archers at the gates, to draw upon 
strange beggars and shoot them down before the 
city walls. Look, now, at the New England provi- 
sion for the destitute, — for the support of their 
bodies and the culture of their minds. 

No Church leads off in these movements ; eccle- 
siastical men take small interest therein ; but they 
come from the three partial forms of piety, the intel- 
lectual, the moral, and the affectional. We need to 
have these all united with a conscious love of God. 
What hinders ? The old ecclesiastical idea of God, 
as finite, imperfect in wisdom, in justice, and in love, 
still blocks the way. The God wholly external to 
the world of matter, acting by fits and starts, is not 
God enough for science, which requires a uniform, 
infinite force, with constant modes of action. The 
capricious Deity, wholly external to the human 
spirit, — jealous, partial, loving Jacob and hating 
Esau, revengeful, blasting with endless hell all but a 
fraction of his family, — this is not God enough for 
the scientific moralist, and the philanthropist run- 
ning over with love. They want a God immanent 
in matter, immanent in spirit, yet infinite, and so 
transcending both, — the God of infinite perfection, 
infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and self-fidelity. 
This idea is a stranger to the Christian, as to the 
Hebrew and Mohammedan church ; and so stout 
men turn off therefrom, or else are driven away with 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 177 



hated names. One day these men will welcome the 
true idea of God, and have a conscious trust and 
love of Him to match their science, their justice, and 
their love of men ; will become the prophets and 
apostles of the Absolute Religion, finding it wide 
enough for all truth, all justice, and all love, yea, for 
an absolute faith in God, in his motives, means, and 
ends. Then all this science of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, all this practical energy, this wide command 
over Nature, this power to organize the world of 
matter and yoke it to the will of man, this love of 
freedom and power to combine vast masses in pro- 
ductive industry ; then all this wide literature of 
modern times, glittering with many-colored riches, 
and spread abroad so swift ; then all this morality 
which clamors for the native right of men, this wide 
philanthropy, laying down its life to bless mankind, 
— all this shall join with the natural emotions of 
the soul, welcoming the Infinite God. It shall all 
unite into one religion ; each part thereof " may 
call the farthest brother." Then what a work will 
religion achieve in the affairs of men ! What in- 
stitutions will it build, what welfare will it pro- 
duce on earth, what men bring forth ! Even now 
the several means are working for this one great 
end, only not visibly, not with the consciousness of 
men. 

I do not complain of the " decline of piety." I 



178 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



thank God for its increase. I see what has been 
done, but I look also to what remains to do. I am 
sure that mankind will do it. God is a master 
workman ; He made man well, — for an end worthy 
of God, provided with means quite adequate to that 
end. No man, not an Isaiah or a Jesus, ever dares 
prophesy so high but man fulfils the oracle, and 
then goes dreaming his prophecy anew, and fulfil- 
ling it as he goes on. If you have a true idea of jus- 
tice, a true sentiment of philanthropy or of faith in 
God, which men have not yet welcomed, if you 
can state your idea in speech, then mankind will 
stop and realize your idea, — make your abstract 
thought their concrete thing. Kings are nothing, 
armies fall before you. The idea sways them in its 
flight as the wind of summer bows the unripe corn 
of June. 

This religion will build temples, not of stone only, 
but temples of living stones, temples of men, fami- 
lies, communities, nations, and a world. We want 
no monarchies in the name of God ; we do want a 
democracy in that name, a democracy which rests 
on human nature, and, respecting that, reenacts the 
natural laws of God, the Constitution of the Uni- 
verse, in the common statutes and written laws of 
the land. 

We need this religion for its general and its spe- 
cial purposes ; need it as subjective piety in each of 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 179 



these fragmentary forms, as joined into a totality of 
religious consciousness ; we need it as morality, 
keeping the natural laws of God for the body and 
the spirit, in the individual, domestic, social, na- 
tional, and general human or cosmic form, the divine 
sentiment becoming the human act. We need this 
to heal the vices of modern society, to revolutionize 
this modern feudalism of gold, and join the rich and 
poor, the employer and the employed, in one bond 
of human fellowship ; we need it to break down the 
wall between class and class, nation and nation, 
race and race, — to join all classes into one nation, 
all nations into one great human family. Science 
alone is not adequate to achieve this ; calculations 
of interest cannot effect it ; political economy will 
not check the iron hand of power, nor relax the 
grasp of the oppressor from his victim's throat. 
Only religion, deep, wide spread, and true, can 
achieve this work. 

Already it is going forward, not under the guid- 
ance of one great man with ideas to direct the 
march, and mind to plan the structure of the future 
age, but under many men, who know each his 
little speciality, all their several parts, while the 
Infinite Architect foresees and so provides for all. 
Much has been done in this century, now only 
half spent; much more is a-doing. But the great- 
est of its works is one which men do not talk about, 



180 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 



nor see : it is the silent development of the several 
parts of a complete piety, one day to be united into 
a consciousness of the Absolute Religion, and to be 
the parent of a new church and new State, with 
communities and families such as the world has 
hitherto not seen. 

We notice the material works of our time, the 
industrial activity, the rapid increase of wealth in 
either England, Old or New. Foolish men deplore 
this, and would go back to the time when an igno- 
rant peasantry, clad in sheep-skins, fall of blind, in- 
stinctive faith in God, and following only as they 
were led by men, built up the cathedrals of Upsala 
and Strasburg. In the order of development, the 
material comes first; even the excessive lust of gain, 
now turning the heads of Old England and the 
New, is part of the cure of the former unnatural 
mistake. Gross poverty is on its way to the grave. 
The natural man is before the spiritual man. We 
are laying a basis for a spiritual structure which no 
man has genius yet to plan. Years ago there were 
crowds of men at work in Lebanon, cutting down 
the algum, the cedar, and the fir, squaring into ash- 
lar, boring, chiselling, mortising, tenoning, all man- 
ner of beams ; some were rafting it along the coast 
to Joppa, and yet others teaming it up to Jerusalem. 
What sweat of horses was there, what lowing of 
oxen and complaint from the camels! Thousands 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 181 

of men were quarrying stone at Moriah for the foun- 
dation of the work. Yet only one man compre- 
hended it all ; the lumberers felling the cedar and 
sycamore, the carpenters and the muleteers, under- 
stood each their special work, no more. But the son 
of the Danite woman planned all this stone and 
timber into a temple, which, by the labor of many 
and the consciousness of a few, rose up on the 
mountain of Jerusalem, the wonder and the pride of 
all the land. So the great work, the humanization 
of man, is going forward. The girl that weaves 
muslins at Brussels, the captain of the emigrant 
ship sailing "past bleak Mozambique," hungry for 
Australian gold, the chemist who annihilates pain 
with a gas and teaches lightning to read and write, 
the philosopher who tells us the mighty faculties 
which lie hid in labyrinthine man, and the philan- 
thropic maiden who in the dirt of a worldly city 
lives love which some theologians think is too much 
for God, — all of these, and thousands more, are get- 
ting together and preparing the materials for the 
great temple of man, whose builder and maker is 
God. You and I shall pass away, but mankind is 
the true son of God that abideth ever, to whom the 
Father says continually, " Come up higher." 

I see the silent growth of religion in men. I see 
that the spiritual elements are a larger fraction of 
human consciousness than ever before ; that there 
16 



182 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AXD THE SOUL. 



is more of truth, of justice, of love, and faith in God 
than was ever in the world. As we know and 
observe the natural laws of man, the constitution of 
the universe, the more, so will this religion continue 
to increase, and the results thereof appear in com- 
mon life, in the individual, domestic, social, national, 
and universal human form. 

Some men say they cannot love, or even know, 
God, except in the form of man. God as the In- 
finite seems to them abstract, and they cannot lay 
hold on Him until a man fills their corporeal eye 
and arms, and the affections cling thereto and are 
blest. So they love Christ, — not the Jesus of his- 
tory, but the Christ of the Christian mythology. — 
an imaginary being, an ideal incarnation of God in 
man. Let them help themselves with this crutch of 
the fancy, as boys use sticks to leap a ditch or 
spring a wall ; yet let them remember that the real 
historical incarnation of God is in mankind, not in 
one person, but all, and human history is a contin- 
ual transfiguration. As the Divine seems nearest 
when human, and men have loved to believe in 
the union of God and man, so religion is love- 
liest when it assumes the form of common life, 
— when daily work is a daily sacrament, and 
life itself a 'psalm of gratitude and prayer of aspi- 
ration. 

It is Palm Sunday to-day, and men in churches 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 183 



remember what is written of the peasant from 
Galilee who rode into Jerusalem amid multitudes 
of earnest men not merely waiting for consolation, 
but going to meet it half-way, who yet knew not 
what they did, nor whom they welcomed. As that 
man went to the capital of a nation which knew 
him not, so in our time Religion rides her ass-colt 
into village and town, welcome to many a weary, 
toiling heart, but ignored and pelted by the succes- 
sors of such as " took counsel against Jesus, to put 
him to death." How little do we know! But he 
that keeps the integrity of his own consciousness, 
and is faithful to himself day by day, is also faithful 
to God for eternity, and helps to restore the integ- 
rity of the world of men. 

The religious actions of old times it is now easy 
to understand. They left their monuments, their 
pyramids, and temples which they built, the memory 
of the wars they fought against their brothers in 
the dear name of Jesus, or of Allah the Only. But 
the religious action of this age, not in the old form, 
— it w T ill take the next generation to understand 
that. 

My friends, this is a young nation, new as yet ; 
you and I can do something to mould its destiny. 
There are millions before us. They will fulfil our 
prophecy, the truer the fairer. Our sentiment of 
religion, our ideas thereof, if true, shall bless them 



184 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AND THE SOUL. 

in their deepest, dearest life. They will rejoice if 
we shall break the yokes from off their necks, 
and rend asunder the old traditionary veil which 
hides from them their Father's face. All of your 
piety, partial or total, shall go down to gladden the 
faces of your children, and to bless their souls for 
ever and for ever. 



VI. 



OF THE CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



LET US GO ON UNTO PERFECTION. — Heb. vi. 1. 

The highest product of a nation is its men ; of 
you and me is our character, the life which we 
make out of our time. Our reputation is what we 
come to be thought of, our character what we come 
to be. In this character the most important element 
is the religious, for it is to be the guide and director 
of all the rest, the foundation-element of human ex- 
cellence. 

In general our character is the result of three 
factors, namely, of our Nature, both that which is 
human, and which we have as men in common 
with all mankind, and that which is individual, 
and which we have as Sarah or George, in dis- 
tinction from all men ; next, of the Educational 
Forces about us ; and, finally, of our own Will, 
which we exercise, and so determine the use we 
16* 



186 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

make of the two other factors ; for it is for us to 
determine whether we will lie flat before natural in- 
stincts and educational forces, or modify their action 
upon us. 

What is true in general of all culture is true in 
special of religious education. Religious character 
is the result of these three factors. 

I suppose every earnest man, who knows what 
religion is, desires to become a religious man, to 
do the most of religious duty, have the most of 
religious rights, and enjoy the most of religious 
welfare ; to give the most for God, and receive the 
most from Him. It does not always appear so, 
yet really is. At the bottom of our hearts we all 
wish for that. We have been misled by blind 
guides, who did not always mean to deceive us ; 
we have often gone astray, led off by our instinc- 
tive passion in youth, our voluntary calculation in 
manhood, yet never meaning to deceive ourselves. 
But there is none of us who does not desire to be 
a religious man, — at least, I never met one who 
confessed it, or of whom I thought it true. But of 
course, they desire it with various degrees of will. 

Writers often divide men into two classes, saints 
and sinners. I like not the division. The best 
men are bad enough in their own eyes. I hope 
God is better pleased with men than we are with 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 187 

ourselves, there are so many things in us all which 
are there against our consent, — evil tenants whom 
we cannot get rid of as yet. That smoky chimney 
of an ill-temper is a torment to poor Mr. Fiery, 
which he has not had courage or strength to re- 
move in fifty winters. To " see ourselves as others 
see us," would often minister to pride and conceit ; 
how many naughty things, actions and emotions 
too, I know of myself, which no calumniator ever 
casts in my teeth. Yet take the worst men whom 
you can find, — men that rob on the highway with 
open violence, pirates on the sea, the more danger- 
ous thieves who devour widows' houses and plunder 
the unprotected in a manner thoroughly legal, re- 
spectable, and " Christian," men that steal from the 
poor; — take the tormentors of the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion, assassins and murderers from New York and 
Naples, nay, the family of commissioners who in 
Boston are willing to kidnap their fellow-citizens for 
ten dollars a head, and bind them and their posterity 
for the perennial torture of American slavery ; — 
even these men would curl and shudder at the 
thought of being without consciousness of God in 
the world ; of living without any religion, and dying 
without any religion. I know some think religion 
is rather uncomfortable to live by, but the worst of 
men, as the best, thinks it is a good thing to die 
with. Men repent of many things on a death-bed ; 



188 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

when the storm blows, all the dead bodies are 
stirred in the bosom of the sea, and no one is then 
sorry for his efforts to become a religious man. 
Many a man, who lives in the violation of his per- 
sonal, domestic, social, national, and general human 
duties, doubtless contrives to think he is a relig- 
ious man, and if in the name of Mammon he robs 
the widow of a pound, he gives a penny to the 
orphan in the name of God, and thinks he serves 
each without much offending the other. Thus, 
kidnappers in these times are " exemplary members " 
of " Christian churches " where philanthropy gets 
roundly rated by the minister from week to week, 
and call themselves " miserable offenders " with the 
devoutest air. This is not all sham. The men 
want to keep on good terms with God, and take 
this as the cheapest, as well as the most respect- 
able way. Louis the Fifteenth had a private 
chapel dedicated to the " Blessed Virgin " in the 
midst of his house of debauchery, where he and 
his poor victims were said to be " very devout 
after the Church fashion." Slave-traders and kid- 
nappers take pains to repel all calumny from their 
"religious" reputation, and do not practise their 
craft till " divines " assure them it is patriarchal 
and even " Christian." I mention these things to 
show that men who are commonly thought emi- 
nently atrocious in their conduct and character, yet 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 189 

would not willingly be without religion. I shall 
take it for granted that all men wish to acquire a 
religious character. 

I take it this is the Idea of a religious character. 
It is, first, to be faithful to ourselves, to rule body 
and spirit, each by the natural law thereof ; to use, 
develop, and enjoy all the faculties, each in its just 
proportions, all in harmonious action, developed to 
the greatest degree which is possible under our cir- 
cumstances ; to have such an abiding consciousness 
of God, that you will have the fourfold form of 
piety, so often dwelt on before, and be inwardly 
blameless, harmonious, and holy. 

It is, next, to be faithful to your fellow men ; to 
do for them what is right, from right motives and 
for right ends ; to love them as yourself; to be use- 
ful to them to the extent of your power ; to live in 
such harmony with them that you shall rejoice in 
their joys, and all be mutually blessed with the bliss 
of each other. 

It is also to be faithful to God ; to know of Him, 
to have a realizing sense of his Infinite power, wis- 
dom, justice, goodness, and holiness, and so a per- 
fect love of God, a perfect trust in Him, a delight in 
the Infinite Being of God; to love him intellectually 
in the love of truth, morally as justice, afTectionally 
as love, and totally as the Infinite God, Father and 



190 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

Mother too of all this world ; so to love God that 
you have no desire to transcend his law or violate 
your duty to yourself, your brother, or your God ; so 
to love Him that there shall be no fear of God, none 
for yourself, none for mankind, but a perfect confi- 
dence and an absolute love shall take the place of 
every fear. In short, it is to serve God by the nor- 
mal use, development, and enjoyment of every fac- 
ulty of the spirit, every limb of the body, and every 
mode of power which we possess. 

I think such is the ideal of a religious character ; 
that there is no one who would not confess a desire 
to be religious in that sense, for it is to be a perfect 
man ; no one who would not make some sacrifice 
for this end ; most men would make a great one, 
some would leave father and mother, and lay down 
their own lives, to secure it. 

What are some of the means to this end, to this 
grace and this glory ? There are four great public 
educational forces, namely, the industrial, political, 
literary, and ecclesiastical action of the people, repre- 
sented by the Business, the State, the Press, and the 
Church.* These have a general influence in the for- 



* See Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, by Theo- 
dore Parker, Boston, 1852, Vol. I. p. 407 et seq., where these edu- 
cational forces are dwelt on at length. 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 191 

mation of the character, and so a special influence in 
the formation of the religious character ; but as they 
cannot be trusted for the general work of forming 
the character, no more can they for this special func- 
tion. They are less reliable in religion than in any 
other matter whatever. By these forces the whole 
community is a teacher of religion to all persons 
born therein ; but it can only teach the mode and 
degree of religion it has itself learned and possessed, 
not that which it has not learned and does not pos- 
sess. Not only can it not teach a religion higher 
than its own, but it hinders you in your attempt to 
learn a new and better mode of religion. 

For several things we may trust these public edu- 
cational forces in religion. 

They teach you in the general popular fear of 
God, and a certain outward reverence which comes 
of that ; the popular sacraments of our time, — to 
give your bodily presence in a meeting-house, per- 
haps to join a sectarian church, and profess great 
reverence for the Bible. 

They will teach you the popular part of your 
practical duties, — personal, domestic, social, ecclesi- 
astical, and political. But of course they can teach 
you only the popular part. 

They may be relied on to teach the majority of 
men certain great truths, which are the common 
property of Christendom, such as the existence of a 



192 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POTTERS. 



God, the immortality of the soul, the certainty of a 
kind of retribution, and the like. Then each sect 
has certain truths of its own which it will commonly 
teach. Thus the Catholics will learn to reverence 
the Roman Church ; the Protestants to venerate the 
Bible ; the Calvinists to believe in the Trinity ; and 
the Unitarians in the Oneness of God. All the 
sects will teach a certain decorum, the observance of 
Sunday, — to honor the popular virtues, to shun the 
unpopular vices. 

The educational forces tend to produce this effect. 
You send your boys to the public schools of Boston, 
they learn the disciplines taught there, — to read, 
write, and calculate. What is not taught they do 
not learn. In Saxony the children learn German ; 
Dutch, in Holland. In the same way the majority 
of men learn the common religion of the community, 
and profess it practically in their markets, their 
houses, their halls of legislature, their courts, and their 
jails. The commercial newspapers, the proceedings 
of Congress, the speeches of public men, — these are 
a part of the national profession of faith, and show 
what is the actual object of worship, and what the 
practical creed of the nation. 

But for any eminence of religion you must look 
elsewhere ; for any excellence of the sentiment, any 
superiority of the idea, any newness in the form of 
religion. These educational forces will teach you 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 193 



evanescent principles which seem to suit your pres- 
ent and partial interests, not eternal principles, which 
really suit your universal and everlasting interests. 
In Jerusalem these forces might educate a Gamaliel, 
— never a Jesus. 

Charles River flows two miles an hour ; chips and 
straws on its surface, therefore, if there be no wind, 
will float with that velocity. But if a man in a 
boat wishes to go ten miles an hour, he must row 
eight miles more than the stream wall carry him. 
So w T e are all in the dull current of the popular re- 
ligion, and may trust it to drift us as fast as it flows 
itself ; we may rise with its flood, and be stranded 
and left dry when it ebbs out before some popular 
wickedness which blow^s from off the shore. The 
religious educational forces of a commercial town, — 
you see in the newspapers what religion they w T ill 
teach you, — in the streets w r hat men they would 
make. 

These educational forces tend to make average 
Christians, and their influence is of great value to 
the community, — like the discipline of a camp. 
But to be eminent religious men, you must depend 
on very different helps. Let us look at some of 
them. 

There are religious men who, by the religious- 
genius they were born to, and the religious use they 
17 



194 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

have made thereof, have risen far above the average 
of Christians. Such men are the first help ; and a 
most important one they are. It is a fortunate 
thing when such an one stands in a church whither 
the public current drives in the people, and to the 
strength of his nature adds the strength of position. 
But it is not often that such a man stands in a 
pulpit. The common ecclesiastical training tends to 
produce dull and ordinary men, with little individual 
life, little zeal, and only the inspiration of a sect. 
However, if a man of religious genius, by some 
human accident, gets into a pulpit, he is in great 
danger of preaching himself out of it. Still there 
are such men, a few of them, stationed along the 
line of the human march ; cities set on a hill, which 
no cloud of obloquy can wholly hide from sight. 
Nay, they are great beacons on the shore of the 
world, — light-houses on the headlands of the coast, 
sending their guidance far out to sea, to warn the 
mariner of his whereabouts, and welcome him to 
port and peace. Street-lamps there must be for the 
thoroughfares of the town, shop-lights also for the 
grocer and the apothecary; nay, hand-lights which 
are made to be carried from room to room and set 
down anywhere, and numerous they will ever be, 
each having its own function. This arrangement 
takes place in the ecclesiastical as well as in munici- 
pal affairs, for each sect has its street-lamps and its 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 195 



shop-lights to guide men to its particular huckstery 
of salvation, and little hand-lights to take into cor- 
ners where the salesmen and the showmen are all 
ready with their wares. But the great Faros of 
Genoa, and Eddystone light-houses of religion must 
always be few and far between ; the world is not 
yet rich enough in spirit to afford many of this sort. 

Yet even in these men you seldom find the whole- 
ness of religion. One has the sentiments thereof ; 
he will kindle your religious feelings, your reverence, 
your devotion, your trust, and your love of God. 

Another has only its ideas ; new thoughts about 
religion, new truths, which he presents to the minds 
of men. Analytic, he destroys the ancient errors of 
theological systems ; thrashes the creeds of the 
churches with the stout flail of philosophy, and sifts 
them as wheat, winnowing with a rough wind, great 
clouds of chaff blow off before his mighty vans. 
Synthetic, he takes the old truth which stood the 
critical thrashing and is now winnowed clean ; he 
joins therewith new truth shot down from God, and 
welcomed into loving arms ; and out of his large 
storehouse this scribe, well instructed unto the king- 
dom of heaven, brings forth things new and old, to 
serve as bread for the living, and seed-corn to gen- 
erations not born as yet. 

A third, with no eminence of feelings commonly 
called religious, — none of theological ideas, — will 



196 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



have yet an eminence of justice, and teach personal 
and social morality as no other man. He may turn 
to a single speciality of morals, and demand tem- 
perance, chastity, the reform of penal law, the recon- 
struction of society, the elevation of woman, and 
the education of the whole mass of men ; or he may 
turn to general philanthropy, the universality of 
moral excellence, — it all comes from the same root, 
and with gratefal welcome should be received. 

Each of these teachers will do real service to your 
souls, — quickening the feelings, imparting ideas, 
and organizing the results of religion in moral acts. 
I know a great outcry has been made in all the 
churches against moral reformers, against men who 
w r ould apply pure religion to common life, in the 
special or the universal form. You all know what 
clamor is always raised against a man who would 
abolish a vice from human society, or establish a 
new virtue. Every wolf is interested in the wilder- 
ness, and hates the axe and the plough of the settler, 
and would devour his child if he dared. So every 
nuisance in society has its supporters, whose property 
is invested therein. Paul found it so at Ephesus, 
Telemachus at Rome, and Garrison in America. I 
doubt not the men of Ephesus thought religion 
good in all matters except the making of silver 
shrines for Diana ; " there it makes men mad.'' 
Men cry out against the advance of morality : 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 197 

"Preach us religion; preach us Christianity, Christ 
and him crucified, and not this infidel matter of 
ending particular sins, and abounding in special 
virtues. Preach us the exceeding sinfulness of sin, 
'original sin' 6 which brought death into the world 
and all our woe ; ' preach the beauty of holiness, and 
the like of that, and let alone the actual sins of 
society, of the shop and the church and the State; — 
be silent about drunkenness and lust, about war, 
slavery, and the thousand forms of avarice which 
we rejoice in. Is it not enough, O Preacher, that 
we give you of our purse and our corporeal presence, 
that we weekly confess ourselves ' miserable offend- 
ers/ with £ no health in us,' and fast, perhaps, twice 
in our lives, but you must convict us of being idola- 
ters also ; yea, drunkards, gluttons, impure in youth 
and avaricious in manhood, — once a Voluptuary, 
and now a Hanker ! Go to now, and preach us the 
blessedness of the righteous, Christ and him cruci- 
fied ! " When money speaks, the Church obeys, 
and the pulpit preaches for doctrine the command- 
ments of the pews. 

But it is these very moral reformers, who, in our 
time, have done more than all others to promote the 
feeling of piety which the churches profess so much 
to covet. The new ground of religion which the 
churches occupy is always won for them by men 
whom the churches hated. In the last thirty years 
17* 



198 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS, 



these " pestilent moral reformers " of New England, 
I think, have done more to promote love of God, 
and faith in Him, than all the other preachers of all 
the churches. Justice is a part of piety ; and such 
is the instinctive love of wholeness in man, that all 
attempts to promote justice amongst men lead ulti- 
mately to the love of God as God. 

In every community you will find a man who 
thus represents some portion of religion, — often, 
perhaps, thinking that part is the whole, because it 
is all that he knows ; here and there we find such an 
one in the pulpit. But now and then there comes a 
man who unites these three functions of piety into 
one great glory of religion ; is eminent in feelings, 
ideas, and actions not the less. Each of those par- 
tial men may help us much, teaching his doctrine, 
kindling our feelings, giving example of his deed, 
and laying out religious work for us, spreading his 
pattern before society. Each of these may help us 
to a partial improvement. But when a man comes 
who unites them all, he will give us a new start, an 
inspiration which no other man can give ; not par- 
tial, but total. 

There are always some such men in the w T orld ; 
th'e seed of the prophets never dies out. It comes 
up in Israel and in Attica ; here a prophet teaching 
truth as divine inspiration, there a philosopher 
with his human discovery. So the Herb of Grace 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 199 



springs up in corners where once old houses 
stood, or wherever the winds have borne the seed ; 
and, cropped by the oxen, and trodden with their 
feet, it grows ever fresh and ever new. When 
Scribes and Pharisees become idolaters at Jerusa- 
lem, and the sheep without a shepherd 

" Look up and are not fed, 
But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread," 

the spirit of God comes newly down on some car- 
penter's son at Nazareth, whose lightning terrifies 
the non-conducting Scribe ; the new encounters the 
perishable old, and all heaven rings with the thunder 
of the collision. Now and then such a person 
comes to stand betwixt the living and the dead. 
" Bury that," quoth he, " it is hopelessly dead, past 
all resurrection. This must be healed, tended, and 
made whole." He is a physician to churches sick of 
sin, as well as with it ; burying the dead, he heals 
also the sick, and quickens the sound into new and 
healthy life. But the owners of swine that perish 
must needs cry out at the loss. 

Yet such a man is not understood in his own 
generation. A man with a single eminent faculty is 
soon seen through and comprehended. This man is 
good for nothing but practice ; that, only for thought. 
One is a sentimentalist; another, a traveller. But 



200 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

when a genius comes eminent in many and most 
heterogeneous faculties, men do not see through nor 
comprehend him in a short time. If he has in him- 
self all the excellence of all the men in the metropo- 
lis, — why, it will take many a great city to compre- 
hend him. The young maiden in the story, for the 
first time hearing her clerical lover preach, wondered 
that those lips could pray as sweetly as they kissed, 
but could not comprehend the twofold sacrament, 
the mystery of this double function of a single 
mouth. Anybody can see that corn grows in this 
field, and kale in that ; the roughest clown knows 
this, but it takes a great many wise men to describe 
the botany of a whole continent. So is it ever. 
Here is a religious man, — writing on purely inter- 
nal emotions of piety, of love of God, of faith in 
Him. of rest for the soul, the foretaste of heaven. 
He penetrates the deeps of religious joy, its peace 
enters his soul, his morning prayer is a psalm deeper 
than David's, with a beauty more various than the 
poetic wreath which the shepherd-king gathered 
from the hill-sides of Jordan or the gardens of 
Mount Zion. Straightway men say : " This man is 
a sentimentalist ; he is a mystic, all contemplation, 
all feeling, — poetical, dreamy, — his light is moon- 
shine." But erelong our sentimentalist writes of 
philosophy, and his keen eye sees mines of wisdom 
not quarried heretofore, and he brings a power of 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



201 



unsunned gold to light. Other men say : " O, this 
man is nothing but a philosopher, a mere thinker, a 
mighty head, but with no more heart than Chim- 
borazo or Thomas Hobbes." Yet presently some 
great sin breaks out, and rolls its desolating flood 
over the land, uprooting field and town, and our 
philosopher goes out to resist the ruin. He de- 
nounces the evil, attacks the institution which thus 
deceives men. Straightway men call out : " Icono- 
clast ! Boanerges ! John Knox ! destroyer ! " and the 
like. Alas me ! men do not know that the same 
sun gathers the dews which water the forget-me-not, 
drooping at noonday, and drives through the sky 
the irresistible storm that shatters the forest in its 
thunderous march, and piles the ruins of a moun- 
tain in an Alpine avalanche. The same soul which 
thundered its forked lightning on Scribes and Phari- 
sees, hypocrites, poured out poetic parables from 
his golden urn, spreading forth the sunshine of the 
beatitudes upon friend and foe, and, half in heaven, 
breathed language wholly thence, — " Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they do." 

It is a great thing once in our days to meet with a 
man of religious genius largely developed into lovely 
fife. He stirs the feelings infinite within us, and 
we go ofT quite other than we came. He has not 
put his soul into our bosom ; he has done better, — 
has waked our soul in our own bosom. Men may 



202 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

go leagues long to listen to such a man, and come 
back well paid. He gives us seeds of future life 
for our little garden. So the husbandman journeys 
far to get a new root or a new seed, to fill his 
ground with beauty or his home with bread. After 
we have listened to the life of such a man, the 
world does not seem so low, nor man so mean ; 
heaven looks nearer, yet higher too ; humanity is 
more rich ; if wrong appear yet more shameful, the 
wrongdoer is not so hopeless. After that I can 
endure trouble ; my constant cross is not so heavy ; 
the unwonted is less difficult to bear. Tears are not 
so scalding to an eye which has looked through 
them into the serene face of a great-souled man. 
Men seem friendlier, and God is exceeding dear. 
The magistrates of Jerusalem marvelled at the con- 
duct of Peter and John, heedful of the higher law of 
God, spite of bonds and imprisonment and politi- 
cians ; but they " took knowledge of them, that they 
had been with Jesus," and the marvel had its ex- 
planation. What a dull, stupid thing is a candle ! 
Touch it with fire, and then look ! We are all of us 
capable of being lit when some Prometheus comes 
down with the spark of God in his right hand. The 
word of Jesus touched the dull fishermen of Galilee, 
and they flamed into martyrs and apostles. 

It is a great thing to meet such a man once in 
your lifetime, to be cheered and comforted in your 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 203 



sad wayfaring, and filled with new vigor and new 
faith in the Father of all. After that we thank God, 
and take courage and fare on our happier way. So 
a company of pilgrims journeying in the wilderness, 
dry, foot-sore, and hot, the water all spent in their 
goat-skins, their camels weary and sick, come to a 
grove of twelve palm-trees, and an unexpected 
spring of pure water wells up in the desert. 
Strightway their weariness is all forgot, their limp- 
ing camels have become whole once more. Staying 
their thirst, they fill their bottles also with the cool 
refreshment, rest in the shadow from the noonday's 
heat, and then with freshened life, the soreness gone 
from every bone, pursue their noiseless and their 
happy march. Even so, says the Old Testament 
story, God sent his angel down in the wilderness to 
feed Elias with the bread of heaven, and in the 
strength thereof the prophet went his forty days, 
nor hungered not. I suppose some of us have had 
this experience, and in our time of bewilderment, 
of scorching desolation, and of sorrow, have come 
upon our well of water and twelve palm-trees in 
the sand, and so have marched all joyful through 
the wilderness. Elias left all the angels of God for 
you and me, — the friendlier for his acquaintance. 

There is a continual need of men of this stamp. 
We live in the midst of religious machinery. 
Many mechanics at piety, often only apprentices 



204 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

and slow to learn, are turning the various ecclesiasti- 
cal mills, and the creak of the motion is thought 
"the voice of God." You put into the hopper a 
crowd of persons, young and old, and soon they 
are ground out into the common run of Chris- 
tians, sacked up, and stored away for safe-keeping 
in the appropriate bins of the great ecclesiastical 
establishment, and labelled with their party names. 
You look about in what is dryly called " the relig- 
ious world." What a mass of machinery is there, 
of dead timber, not green trees! what a jar and 
discord of iron clattering upon iron ! Action is of 
machinery, not of life, and it is green new life that 
you want. So men grow dull in their churches. 
What a weariness is an ordinary meeting on one 
of the fifty-two ordinary Sundays of the year! 
What a dreary thing is an ordinary sermon of an 
ordinary minister ! He does not wish to preach 
it; the audience does not wish to hear it. So 
he makes a feint of preaching, they a feint of hear- 
ing him preach. But he preaches not; they hear 
not. He is dull as the cushion he beats, they as the 
cushions they cover. A body of men met in a 
church for nothing, and about nothing, and to hear 
nobody, is to me a ghastly spectacle. Did you ever 
see cattle in a cold day in the country crowd to- 
gether in an enclosure, the ground frozen under their 
feet, and no hay spread upon it, — huddling together 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 205 

for warmth, hungry, but inactive, because penned 
up, and waiting with the heavy, slumberous patience 
of oxen till some man should come and shake down 
to them a truss of clean bright hay, still redolent of 
clover and honeysuckle? That is a cheerful sight; 
and when the farmer comes and hews their winter 
food out of the stack, what life is in these slumber- 
ous oxen ! their venerable eyes are full of light, 
because they see their food. Ah me ! how many a 
herd of men is stall-hungered in the churches, not 
getting even the hay of religion, only a little chaff 
swept off from old thrashing-floors whence the corn 
which great men beat out of its husk was long since 
gathered up to feed and bless mankind ! Churches 
are built of stone. I have often thought pulpits 
should be cushioned with husks. 

Of all melancholy social sights that one sees, few 
are so sad as a body of men got together to convert 
mankind to sectarianism by ecclesiastical machinery, 
— men dead as timber, cut down, dead and dry! 
Out of wire, muslin, thread, starch, gum, and sundry 
chemicals, French milliners make by dozens what 
they call roses, lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, 
and the like. Scentless and seedless abortions are 
they, and no more. What a difference between the 
flower the lover gathers by the brookside for his 
maiden's breast, and the thing which the milliner 
makes with her scissors ; between the forget-me-not 

18 



206 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



of the meadow and the forget-me-not of the shop ! 
Such an odds is there betwixt religious men and 
Christians manufactured in a mill. 

In the factories of England you find men busy all 
their life in making each the twenty-sixth part of a 
watch. They can do nothing else, and become 
almost as much machines as the grindstone which 
sharpens their drill, or the rammage which carries 
their file. Much of our ecclesiastical machinery 
tends to make men into mere fixtures in a mill. So 
there must be a continual accession of new religious 
life from without into the churches to keep Chris- 
tians living. Men of religious genius it is who bring 

it in. Without them " religion " in cities would be- 
es 

come mere traditional theology, and "life in God" 
would be sitting in a meeting-house, and the bap- 
tism in water from an aqueduct taken for the com- 
munion of the Holy Ghost. Blessed be God that 
there are such men not smothered in the surplice of 
the priest, but still alive in God, and God alive in 
them ! 

In old towns all the water that fills the wells is 
dead water, — dead and dirty too; the rinsings of 
the streets, the soakings of stables, the slop of mar- 
kets, the wash and offscouring of the town ; even the 
filterings of the graveyard settle therein, and the 
child is fed with its grandsire's bones. Men would 
perish if left alone, dying of their drink. So, far off 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS, 



207 



in the hills, above the level of the town, they seek 
some mountain lake, and furnish a pathway that its 
crystal beauty may come to town. There the living 
water leaps up in public fountains, it washes the 
streets, it satisfies the blameless cattle, it runs into 
every house to cleanse and purify and bless, and men 
are glad as the Hebrews when Moses smote the 
fabled rock. So comes religious genius unto men : 
some mountain of a man stands up tall, and all win- 
ter long takes the snows of heaven on his shoulders, 
all summer through receives the cold rain into his 
bosom ; both become springs of living w^ater at his 
feet. Then the proprietors of fetid wells and subter- 
ranean tanks, which they call " Bethesda," though 
often troubled by other than angels, and whence they 
retail their " salvation " a pennyworth at a time, — 
they cry out with sneer and scoff and scorn against 
our new-born saint. " Shall Christ come out of Gal- 
ilee ? " quoth they. " Art thou greater than our 
father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank there- 
of himself, and his children, and his cattle ? Who 
are you ? " Thus, the man of forms has ever his 
calumny against the man of God. 

Religious teachers there will ever be, — a few or- 
ganizers, many an administrator of organizations ; 
but inventors in religion are always few. These are 
the greatest external helps to the manhood of relig- 
ion. All great teaching is the teacher's inspiration ; 



208 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



this is truer in religion than in aught besides, for here 
all is life, and nothing a trick of mechanism. Let 
us take all the good that we can gain from the rare 
men of religious genius, but never submit and make 
even them our lords ; teachers ever, let them never 
be masters. 

Then there are religious books, such as waken the 
soul by their direct action, — stirring us to piety? 
stirring us to morality, — books in which men of 
great religious growth have garnered up the expe- 
rience of their life. Some of them are total, — for all 
religion; some partial, — for the several specialities 
thereof. These books are sacks of corn carried from 
land to land, to be sown, and bear manifold their 
golden fruit. There are not many such in the world. 
There are few masterpieces of poetry in all the 
earth ; a boy's school-bag would hold them all, from 
Greece and Rome, Italy, Germany, England. The 
masterpieces of piety in literature are the rarest of 
all. In a mineralogist's cabinet what bushels there 
are of quartz, mica, hornblende, slate, and coal ; and 
common minerals by heaps ; reptiles and fishes done 
in stone ; only here and there an emerald; and dia- 
monds are exceeding rare. So is it with gems of 
holy thought. Some psalms are there from the 
Bible, though seldom a whole one that is true to the 
soul of man, — now and then an oracle from a He- 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 209 

brew prophet, full of faith in God, a warrior of piety, 
— which keep their place in the cabinet of religion, 
though two or three thousand years have passed by 
since then authors ceased to be mortal. But the 
most quickening of all religious literature is still 
found in the first three Gospels of the New Testa- 
ment, — in those dear beatitudes, in occasional flow- 
ers of religion, — parable and speech. The beati- 
tudes will outlast the pyramids. Yet the New Tes- 
tament and its choicest texts must be read with the 
caution of a free-bom man. Even in the words of 
Jesus of Nazareth much is merely Hebrew, — mark- 
ed with the limitations of the nation and the man. 

Other religious books there are precious to the 
heart of man. Some of the works of Augustine, of 
Thomas a Kempis, of Fenelon, of Jeremy Taylor, of 
John Bunyan, of William Law, have proved exceed- 
ing dear to pious men throughout the Christian 
world. In a much narrower circle of readers, 
Buckminster, Channing, and Ware have com- 
forted the souls of men. Herbert and Watts 
have here and there a " gem of purest ray serene," 
and now and then a flower blooms into beauty 
in the desert air of liturgies, breviaries, and collec- 
tions of hymns. The religious influence of Words- 
worth's poetry has been truly great. With no 
large poetic genius, often hemmed in by the nar- 
rowness of his traditionary creed and the puerile 
18* 



210 CULTURE OF THE EELIGIOUS POWERS. 

littleness of men about him, he had yet an exceed- 
ing love of God, which ran over into love of men, 
and beautified his every day ; and many a poor 
girl, many a sad boy, has been cheered and lifted 
up in soul and sense by the brave piety in his 
sonnets and in his lyric sweeps of lofty song. A 
writer of our own time, with large genius and un- 
faltering piety, adorning a little village of New 
England with his fragrant life, has sent a great 
religious influence to many a house in field and 
town, and youths and maids rejoice in his electric 
touch. I will leave it to posterity to name his 
, name, — the most original, as well as religious, of 
American writers. 

But the great vice of what is called "religious 
literature " is this. It is the work of narrow- 
minded men, sectarians, and often bigots, who 
cannot see beyond their own little partisan chapel ; 
men who know little of any thing, less of man, and 
least of all of real religion. What criticism do 
such men make on noble men ? The criticism 
of an oyster on a thrush ; nay, sometimes, of a 
toad " ugly and venomous," with no "jewel in 
its head," upon a nightingale. Literature of that 
character is a curse. In the name of God it mis- 
leads common men from religion, and it makes 
powerful men hate religion itself; at least hate 
its name. It bows weak men down till they trem- 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 211 



ble and fear all their mortal life. I lack words to 
express my detestation of this trash, — concocted 
of sectarian cant and superstitious fear. I trem- 
ble when I think of the darkness it spreads over 
human life, of the disease which it inoculates man- 
kind withal, and the craven dread it writes out upon 
the face of its worshippers. Look at the history of 
the Athanasian Cree'd and the Westminster Cate- 
chism. They have done more, it seems to me, to 
retard the religious development of Christendom, 
than all the ribald works of confessed infidels, from 
Lucian, the king of scoffers, down to our own days. 
The American Tract Society, with the best inten- 
tions in the world, it seems to me is doing more 
damage to the nation than all the sellers of intoxi- 
cating drink and all the prostitutes in the land ! 

Some books on religious matters are the work 
of able men, men well disciplined, but yet con- 
taminated with false views of God, of man, and of 
the relation between the two ; with false views of 
life, of death, and of the next, eternal world. Such 
men were Baxter and Edwards and many more, 
— Protestant and Catholic, Christian, Hebrew, 
Buddhist, and Mahometan. All these books should 
be read with caution and distrust. Still a wise 
man, with a religious spirit, in the religious liter- 
ature of the world, from Confucius to Emerson, 
may find much to help his growth. 



212 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

After the attainment of manlier years in piety, 
other works, not intentionally religious, will help a 
man greatly. Books of science, which show the 
thought of God writ in the world of matter ; books 
of history, which reveal the same mind in the de- 
velopment of the human race, slow, but as constant 
and as normal as the growth of a cedar or the dis- 
closing of an egg; Newton and Laplace, Descartes 
and Kant, indirectly, through their science, stir de- 
vout souls to deeper devotion. A thoughtful man 
dissolves the matter of the universe, leaving only 
its forces ; dissolves away the phenomena of human 
history, leaving only immortal spirit; he studies the 
law, the mode of action, of these forces, and this 
spirit, which make up the material and the human 
world ; and I see not how he can fail to be filled 
with reverence, with trust, with boundless love of 
the Infinite God who devised these laws of mat- 
ter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvel- 
lous universe of things and men. Science also 
has its New Testament. The beatitudes of phi- 
losophy are profoundly touching ; in the exact 
laws of matter and of mind the great Author of the 
world continually says, " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." 

The study of Nature is another great help to the 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 213 



cultivation of religion. Familiarity with the grass 
and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and 
trust than we can glean from the writings of Fene- 
lon and Augustine. What lessons did Socrates, 
Jesus, and Luther learn from the great Bible of God, 
ever open before mankind ! It is only indirectly 
that He speaks in the sights of a city, — the brick 
garden with dioecious fops for flowers. But in the 
country all is full of God, and the eternal flowers of 
heaven seem to shed sweet influence on the perisha- 
ble blossoms of the earth. Nature is full of religious 
lessons to a thoughtful man. The great sermon of 
Jesus was preached on a mountain, which preached 
to him as he to the people, and his figures of speech 
were first natural figures of fact. But the religious 
use to be made of natural objects would require a 
sermon of itself. 

The great reliance for religious growth must not 
be on any thing external ; not on the great and liv- 
ing souls whom God sends, rarely, to the earth, to 
water the dry ground with their eloquence, and 
warm it with their human love ; nor must it be on 
the choicest gems of religious thought, wherein 
saints and sages have garnered up their life and left 
it for us. We cannot rely on the beauty or the 
power of outward Nature to charm our wandering 
soul to obedience and trust in God. These things 



214 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



may jostle us by the elbow when we read, warn us 
of wandering, or of sloth, and open the gate, but we 
must rely on ourselves for entering in. By the aid 
of others and our own action we must form the ideal 
of a religious man, of what he ought to be and do, 
under our peculiar circumstances. To form this 
personal ideal, and fit ourselves thereto, requires an 
act of great earnestness on our part. It is not a 
thing to be done in an idle hour. It demands the 
greatest activity of the mightiest mode of mind. 
But what a difference there is between men in 
earnestness of character! Do you understand the 
<; religion " of a frivolous man ? With him it is all 
a trifle ; the fashion of his religion is of less concern 
than the fashion of his hat or of the latchet of his 
shoes. He asks not for truth, for justice, for love. — 
asks not for God, cares not. The great sacrament 
of religious life is to him less valuable than a flask 
of Rhenish wine broke on a jesters head. The spe- 
cific levity of these men appears in their relation to 
religion. The fool hath said in his heart, li There is 
no God." Quoth the fop in his waistcoat. " What 
if there be none ? "What is that to me ? Let us 
dance and be silly ! " Did you ever see a frivolous 
man and maid in love, — so they called it ? I 
have : it was like putting on a new garment of un- 
certain fit ; and the giving and the taking of what 
was called a " heart " was like buying a quantity of 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



215 



poison weed to turn to empty smoke. They w^ere 
"fearfully and wonderfully made for each other." 
So have I seen a silly man give a bad coin to a beg- 
gar in the streets. 

I know there are those whose practical religion is 
only decency. They have no experience of religion, 
but the hiring of a seat in a church where pew and 
pulpit both invite to sleep, — whose only sacrifice is 
their pew-tax ; their single sacrament but bodily 
presence in a church. There are meeting-houses 
full of such men, which ecclesiastical upholsterers 
have furnished with pulpit, and pew, and priest, 
objects of pity to men with human hearts ! 

When an earnest young man offers a woman his 
heart and his life and his love, asking her for her 
heart and her life and her love, it is no easy hour to 
man or maid. The thought of it takes the rose 
out of the young cheek, gives a new lustre to the 
eye w T hich has a deeper and mysterious look, and a 
terrible throbbing to the heart. For so much de- 
pends upon a word that forms or else misshapes so 
much in life, and soul and sense are clamoring for 
their right. The past comes up to help create the 
future, and all creation is new before the lover's eye, 
and all 

" The floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." 



216 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

So is it in some great hour when an earnest man 
holds communion with himself, seeking to give and 
take with God, and asks : " What ought I in my 
life to be and do ? " Depend upon it, only to the 
vulgarest of men is it a common hour. I will not 
say that every earnest man has his one enamored 
hour of betrothing himself to religion. Some have 
this sudden experience, and give themselves to piety 
as they espouse a bride found when not looked for, 
and welcomed with a great swelling of the heart 
and prophetic bloomings of the yearning soul. 
Others go hand in hand therewith as brother and 
sister, through all their early days in amiable amity 
whieh sin has never broke and seldom jarred ; and 
so the wedlock of religion is as the acquaintance 
which began in babyhood, was friendship next at 
home and school, and slowly under tranquil skies 
grew up and blossomed out at last to love. This is 
the common way, — an ascent without a sudden 
leap. If bred as religious children, you grow up re- 
ligious men. But under the easiest of discipline, I 
think, every earnest man has his time of trial and of 
questioning, when he asks himself, " Shall I serve 
the soul by a life of piety; or shall I only serve the 
flesh, listing in the popular armada of worldliness 
to do battle in that leprous host ? That, I say, is a 
time of trial. 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 217 

Let us suppose some earnest man forms the true 
ideal of religion, — of his duty to himself, his brother, 
and his God. He is next to observe and attend to 
himself, making his prayer a practice, and his ideal 
dream an actual day of life. Here he is to watch 
and scan himself, to see what causes help, and what 
hinder him in his religious growth. We have differ- 
ent dispositions, all of us ; what tempts one, is noth- 
ing to another man ; every heart knows only its own 
bitterness, not also that of another. Let me know 
my weak points and my strong ones ; forewarned, I 
shall be then forearmed. This man in the period of 
passion is led off' by the lusts of the body ; that in 
the period of calculation is brought into yet greater 
peril by his ambition, — his love of riches, place, and 
the respect of men. The Devil rings a dollar in one 
man's ear ; he dreams of money every day. Some 
sensual lust catches another, as flies with poisoned 
sweet. To speak mythologically, the Devil has dif- 
ferent baits to lure his diverse prey. Love of ap- 
plause strips this man of his conscience, his affec- 
tion, and his self-respect, of his regard for God, and 
drives him naked through a dirty world. Let a man 
know in what guise the tempter comes, and when, 
and he will not suffer his honor to be broken through. 
For this purpose, in the earlier period of life, or later 
when placed in positions of new peril, it is well to* 
ask at the close of every day, " What have I done* 
19 



218 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

that is wrong, — what have I said, or thought, or 
felt ? What that is right ? " It is well thus to ori- 
ent yourself before your Idea and your God, and see 
if there be any evil thing in you. This is needful 
until the man has gained complete possession of 
every limb of his body and of each faculty of his 
spirit, and can use them each after its own law in 
his particular position. Then he will do right with 
as little trouble as he walks about his daily work. 
His life will sanctify itself. 

Do you know how artists make their great pic- 
tures ? First, they form the idea. It is a work of 
sweat and watching. The man assembles all the 
shapes of beauty and of power which he has ever 
seen, or thought, or fancied, or felt. They flash 
along before his quickened eye, wildered and wan- 
dering now. New forms of beauty spring into life 
at the bidding of his imagination, — so flowers at 
touch of spring. Erelong he has his idea, compos- 
ite, gathered from many a form of partial beauty, 
and yet one ; a new creation never seen before. 
Thus in his seething mind Phidias smelts the several 
beauty of five hundred Spartan maids into his one 
Pallas- Athena, born of his head this time, a grand 
eclecticism of loveliness. So Michael devised his 
awful form of God creating in the Vatican ; and 
Raphael his dear Cecilia, sweetest of pictured saints, 
— so fair, she drew the angels down to see her sing, 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 219 



and ears were turned to eyes. Now the artist has 
formed his idea. But that is not all. Next, he must 
make the idea that is in his mind a picture in the 
eyes of men ; his personal fiction must become a 
popular fact. So he toils* over this new work for 
many a weary day, and week, and month, and year, 
with penitential brush oft painting out what once 
amiss he painted in, — for even art has its error, the 
painter's sin, and so its remorse ; the artist is made 
wiser by his own defeat. At last his work stands 
there complete, — the holy queen of art. Genius is 
the father, of a heavenly line ; but the mortal mother, 
that is Industry. 

Now as an artist, like Phidias, Angelo, or Ra- 
phael, must hold a great act of imagination to form 
his idea, and then industriously toil, often wiping 
out in remorse what he drew in passion or in igno- 
rance ; so the man who would be religious must 
hold his creative act of prayer, to set the great ex- 
ample to himself, and then industriously toil to 
make it daily life, shaping his actual, not from the 
chance of circumstance, but from the ideal purpose 
of his soul. 

There is no great growth in manly piety without 
fire to conceive, and then painstaking to reproduce 
the idea, — without the act of prayer, the act of 
industry. The act of prayer, — that is the one great 
vital means of religious growth ; the resolute desire 



220 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

and the unconquerable will to be the image of a 
perfect man ; the comparison of your actual day 
with your ideal dream ; the rising forth, borne up 
on mighty pens, to fly towards the far heaven of 
religious joy. Fast as you learn a truth, moral, 
affectional, or religious, apply the special truth to 
daily life, and you increase your piety. So the best 
school for religion is the daily work of common life, 
with its daily discipline of personal, domestic, and 
social duties, — the daily work in field or shop, mar- 
ket or house, " the charities that soothe and heal 
and bless." 

Nothing great is ever done without industry. 
Sloth sinks the idle boy to stupid ignorance, and 
vain to him are schools, and books, and all the ap- 
pliances of the instructor's art. It is industry in 
religion which makes the man a saint. What zeal 
is there for money, — what diligence in learning to 
be a lawyer, a fiddler, or a smith ! The same indus- 
try to be also religious men, — what noble images 
of God it would make us ! ay, what blessed men. 
Even in the special qualities of fiddler, lawyer, 
smith, we should be more ; for general manhood is 
the stuff we make into tradesmen of each special 
craft, and the gold which was fine in the ingot is 
fine also in the medal and the coin. 

You have seen a skilful gardener about his work. 
He saves the slips of his pear-trees, prunings from 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS, 



221 



his currant-bush ; he watches for the sunny hours in 
spring to air his passion-flower and orange-tree. 
How nicely he shields his dahlias from the wind, 
his melons from the frost! Patiently he hoards cut- 
tings from a rose-bush, and the stone of a peach ; 
choice fruit in another's orchard next year is grafted 
on his crabbed stock, which in three years rejoices 
in alien flowers and apples not its own. Are we 
not gardeners, all of us, to fill our time with greener 
life, with fragrant beauty, and rich, timely fruit ? 
There are bright, cheery morning hours good for 
putting in the seed; moments of sunnier delight, 
when some success not looked for, the finding of a 
friend, husband, or wife, the advent of a child, mel- 
lows the hours. Then nurse the tender plant of 
piety; one day its bloom will adorn your gloomy 
hour, and be a brightness in many a winter day 
which now you reck not of. 

There are days of sadness when it rains sorrow 
on you, — when you mourn the loss of friends, their 
sad defeat in mortal life, or worse still, the failure 
of yourself, your wanderings from the way of life, 
or prostrate fall therein. Use, then, O man, these 
hours for penitence, if need be, and vigorous re- 
solve. Water the choicest, tender plants; one 
day the little seedling you have planted with your 
tears shall be a broad tree, and under its arms you 
19* 



222 CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 

will screen your head from the windy storm and 
ihe tempest ; — yes, find for your bones a quiet 
grave at last. 

Do you commit a sin, an intentional violation 
of the law of God, you may make even that help 
you in your religious growth. He who never hun- 
gered knows not the worth of bread ; who never 
suffered, nor sorrowed, nor went desolate and alone, 
knows not the full value of human sympathy and 
human love. I have sometimes thought that a 
man who had never sinned nor broke the integrity 
of his consciousness, nor, by wandering, disturbed 
the continuity of his march towards perfection, — 
that he could not know the power of religion to 
fortify the soul. But there are no such men. We 
learn to walk by stumbling at the first ; and spirit- 
ual experience is also bought by errors of the soul. 
Penitence is but the cry of the child hurt in his 
fall. Shame on us that we affect the pain so oft, 
and only learn to whine an unnatural contrition! 
Sure I am that the grief of a soul, self-wounded, the 
sting of self-reproach, the torment of remorse for 
errors of passion, for sins of calculation, may 
quicken any man in his course to manhood, till he 
;runs and is not weary. The mariner learns wisdom 
from each miscarriage of his ship, and fronts the 
seas anew to triumph over wind and wave. 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 223 

Some of you are young men and maidens. You 
look forward to be husbands and wives, to be fath- 
ers and mothers, some day. Some of you seek to 
be rich, some honored. Is it not well to seek to 
have for yourself a noble, manly character, to be re- 
ligious men and women, with a liberal development 
of mind and conscience, heart and soul ? You will 
meet w 7 ith losses, trials, disappointments, in your 
business, in your friends and families, and in your- 
selves ; many a joy will also smile on you. You 
may use the sunny sky and its falling weather alike 
to help your religious growth. Your time, young 
men, what life and manhood you may make of that. 

Some of you are old men, your heads white with 
manifold experience, and life is writ in storied hiero- 
glyphics on cheek and brow. Venerable faces ! I 
hope I learn from you. I hardly dare essay to teach 
men before whom time has unrolled his lengthened 
scroll, men far before me in experience of life. But 
let me ask you, if, while you have been doing your 
work, — have been gathering riches, and tasting the 
joys of time, — been son, husband, father, friend, — 
you have also greatened, deepened, heightened your 
manly character, and gained the greatest riches, — 
the wealth of a religious soul, incorruptible and un- 
defiled, the joys that cannot fade away ? 

For old or young, there is no real and lasting 
human blessedness without this. It is the sole suf- 



224 



CULTURE OF THE RELIGIOUS POWERS. 



ficient and assured defence against the sorrows of 
the world, the disappointments and the griefs of life, 
the pains of unrequited righteousness and hopes 
that went astray. It is a never-failing fountain of 
delight. 

" There are briers besetting every path, 
That call for patient care ; 
There is a cross in every lot, 

And an earnest need for prayer; 
But the lowly heart that trusts in Thee 
Is happy everywhere." 



VII, 

OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF 
STRENGTH. 



THE LORD IS THE STRENGTH OF MY LIFE. — Ps. XXYii. 1. 

There are original differences of spiritual strength. 
I mean of intellectual, moral, affectional, and relig- 
ious power ; these depend on what may be called 
the natural spiritual constitution of the individual. 
One man is born with a strong spiritual constitu- 
tion, another with a weak one ! So one will be 
great, and the other," little. It is no shame in this 
case, no merit in that. Surely it is no more merit 
to be born to genius than to gold, to mental more 
than to material strength ; no more merit to be born 
to mora], afTectional, and religious strength than to 
mere intellectual genius. But it is a great conve- 
nience to be born to this large estate of spiritual 
wealth, a very great advantage to possess the high- 



226 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 



est form of human power, — eminence of intellect, 
of conscience, of the affections, of the soul. 

There is a primitive intellectual difference amongst 
men which is ineffaceable from the man's mortal 
being, as the primary qualities are ineffaceable from 
the atoms of matter. It will appear in all the life of 
the man. Even great wickedness will not wholly 
destroy this primeval loftiness of mind. Few men 
were ever better born in respect to intellect than 
Francis Bacon and Thomas Went worth, — " the 
great Lord Verulam " and " the great Earl of Straf- 
ford : " few men ever gave larger proof of superior 
intellect, even in its highest forms of development, 
of general force and manly vigor of mind ; few ever 
used great natural ability, great personal attain- 
ments, and great political place, for purposes so self- 
ish, mean, and base. Few ever fell more com- 
pletely. Yet, spite of that misdirection and abuse, 
the marks of greatness and strength appear in them 
both to the very last. Bacon was still " the wisest, 
brightest," if also " the meanest of mankind." I 
know a great man may ruin himself ; stumbling is 
as easy for a mammoth as a mouse, and much more 
conspicuous ; but even in his fall his greatness will 
be visible. The rain of a colossus is gigantic, — its 
fragments are on a grand scale. You read the size 
of the ship in the timbers of the wreck, fastened 
with mighty bolts. The Tuscan bard is true to na- 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



227 



ture as to poetry in painting his odious potentates 
magnificently mighty even in hell. Satan fallen 
seems still " not less than archangel mined " ! 

I do not deny this natural and ineffaceable differ- 
ence between men in reference to their strength of 
character, their quantity of being. I am not going 
to say that conscious piety will make a great man 
out of a little one ; that it would give to George the 
Third the strength of Charlemagne or Napoleon. 
No training will make the shrub-oak a tree-oak ; no 
agriculture swell a cape to a continent. But I do 
mean to say, that religion, conscious piety, will 
increase the actual strength of the great and of the 
little ; that through want of religious culture the 
possibility of strength is diminished in both the little 
and the great. 

Not only does religion greaten the quantity of 
power, it betters its quality at the same time. So 
it both enlarges a man's general power for himself 
or his brother, and enhances the mode of that power, 
thus giving him a greater power of usefulness and a 
greater power of welfare, more force to delight, more 
force to enjoy. This is true of religion taken in its 
wide sense, — a life in harmony with myself, in con- 
cord with my brother, in unity with my God ; true 
of religion in its highest form, the conscious worship 
of the Infinite God by the normal use of every 



228 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



faculty of the spirit, every limb of the body, and 
every portion of material or social power. 

Without this conscious religious development, it 
seems to me that no strength or greatness is admira- 
bly human ; and with it, no smallness of opportu- 
nity, no littleness of gift, is contemptible or low. I 
reverence great powers, given or got; but I rever- 
ence much more the faithful use of powers either 
large or little. 

Strength of character appears in two general 
modes of power, accordingly as it is tried by one 
or other of two tests. It is power to do, or power 
to bear. One is active, and the other passive, but 
both are only diverse modes of the same thing. 
The hard anvil can bear the blows of the hard ham- 
mer which smites it, because there is the same solid- 
ity in the nether anvil which bears up, as in the 
upper hammer which bears down. It takes as much 
solidity to bear the blow as to give it ; only one is 
solidity active, the other merely passive. 

Religion increases the general strength and vol- 
ume of character. The reason is plain : Religion is 
keeping the natural law of human nature in its three- 
fold mode of action, — in relation to myself, to my 
brother, and to my God ; the coordination of my 
will with the will of God, with the ideal of my 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



229 



nature. So it is action according to my nature, not 
against it ; it is the agreement of my finite will with 
the Infinite Will which controls the universe and 
provides for each portion thereof. 

Now, to use a thing against its nature, to abuse it, 
is ultimately to fail of the natural end thereof, and 
waste the natural means provided for the attain- 
ment of the end. A boat is useful to journey with 
by sea, a chaise to journey with by land ; use each 
for its purpose, you enjoy the means and achieve 
the end. But put off to sea in your chaise, or put 
on to land in your boat, you miss the end, — you 
lose also the means. This is true of the natural, as 
of the artificial instruments of man ; of his limbs, 
as of his land-carriages or sea-carriages. Hands are 
to work with, feet to walk on ; the feet would make 
a poor figure in working, the hands an ill figure in 
essaying to walk. The same rule holds good in 
respect to spiritual faculties as in bodily organs. 
Passion is not designed to- rule conscience, but to 
serve ; conscience not to serve passion, but to rule. 
If passion rule and conscience serve, the end is not 
reached, you are in a state of general discord with 
yourself, your brother, and your God ; the means 
also fail and perish ; conscience becomes weak, the 
passion itself dies from the plethora of its indul- 
gence ; the whole man grows less and less, till he 
becomes the smallest thing he is capable of dwind- 
20 



230 



CONSCIOUS RELIGIOX AS A 



ling into. But if conscience rule and passion serve, 
all goes well; you reach the end, — welfare in gen- 
eral, harmony with yourself, concord with your 
brother, and unity with your God ; you keep the 
means, — conscience and passion are each in posi- 
tion, and at their proper function ; the faculties 
enlarge until they reach their entire measure of pos- 
sible growth, and the whole man becomes the great- 
est he is capable of being here and now. 

You see this strength of character, which natu- 
rally results from religion, not only in its general 
forms, but in its special modes. Look a moment at 
the passive power, the power to endure suffering. 
See the fact in the endurance of the terrible artificial 
torments that are used to put down new forms of 
religion, or extinguish the old. While men believe in 
the divinity of matter, they try suspected persons 
by exposure to the elements, — walking over redhot 
ploughshares, holding fire in the naked hand, or 
plunging into water. All new forms of religion 
must pass through the same ordeal, and run the 
gauntlet betwixt bishops, priests, inquisitors ; be- 
tween scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites. See 
how faithfully the trial has been borne. Men nat- 
urally shrink from pain ; the stout man dreads the 
toothache, he curls at the mention of the rheuma- 
tism, and shivers at the idea of an ague ; how sud- 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



231 



denly he drops a piece of burning paper which 
would tease his hand for a minute! But let a 
man have religion wakened in his heart, and be 
convinced that it is of God, let others attempt to 
drive it out of him, and how ready is he to bear all 
that malice can devise or tyranny inflict! The 
thumb-screws and the racks, the whip, the gallows, 
and the stake, — the religious man has strength to 
bear all these ; and Cranmer holds his right arm, 
erring now no more, in the flame, till the hand drops 
off in the scalding heat. You know the persecu- 
tions of Peter and Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, 
the trials of early Christians, — Ignatius, Polycarp, 
Justin, Irenseus, and the rest. They all went out to 
preach the form of religion themselves had practised, 
and enjoyed in their own souls. What could they 
offer men as an inducement to conversion ? The 
common argument at this day, — respectability, a 
comfortable life and an honorable death, the praise 
of men ? Could Origen and Cyprian tell the young 
maiden : " Come to our church, and you will be 
sure to get a nice husband, as dainty fine as any 
patrician in Ephesus or Carthage ? " Could they 
promise " a fashionable company in prayer," and a 
rich wife to the young man who joined their 
church ? It was not exactly so ; nay, it was con- 
siderably different. They could offer their converts 
hunger, and nakedness, and peril, and prison, and 



232 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



the sword ; ay, and the scorn of relatives and the 
contemporaneous jeer of a cruel world. But ' ; the 
word of God grew and prevailed.*' The nice vo- 
luptuary, the dainty woman, too delicate to set 
foot upon the ground, became converted, and then 
they could defy the axe of the headsman and the 
tormentor's rack. Unabashed they stood before 
wild beasts ; ay, they looked in the face of the 
marshals and commissioners and district judges of 
those times, — men who perverted law and spit on 
justice with blasphemous expectoration, — and yet 
the religious soul did not fear ! 

In the Catholic Church this is Saint Victorian's 
Day. Here is the short of his story. He was an 
African nobleman of Adrumetum, governor of Car- 
thage with the Roman title of Proconsul, the wealth- 
iest man in the province of Africa. He was a 
Catholic ; but Huneric. the king of the Vandals in 
Africa, was an Arian, and in the year four hundred 
and eighty began to persecute the Catholics. He 
commanded Victorian to continue the persecution, 
offering him great wealth and the highest honors. 
It was his legal obligation to obey the king. 
" Tell the king that I trust in Christ," said the 
Catholic proconsul ; " the king may condemn me 
to the flames, to wild beasts, to any tortures, I shall 
never renounce the Church." He was put to the 
most tormenting tortures, and bore them like a 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



233 



man. Others met a similar death with the same 
steadiness of soul. Even the executioners felt the 
effect of such heroism of endurance. " Nobody," 
said they, " embraces our religion now ; everybody 
follows the example of the martyrs." 

The Catholic Church tried the same weapons 
against heretics that had been first found wanting 
when turned against the early Christians. The 
tyrant, with the instinct of Pharaoh, seeks to de- 
stroy the male children, the masculine intellect, con- 
science, affections, soul. Then a new race of Pauls 
and Justins springs up ; a new Ignatius, Polycarp, 
and Victorian, start into life. The Church may 
burn Arnaldo da Brescia, Savonarola, Huss ; — what 
profits it ? The religion which the tyrant persecutes 
makes the victim stronger than the victor ; then it 
steals into the heart of the people, and as the wind 
scatters the martyr's ashes far and wide, so the spec- 
tacle or the fame of his fidelity spreads abroad the 
sentiment of that religion which made him strong. 
The persecuting Nile wafts Moses into the king's 
court, and the new religion is within the walls. 

You know how the Puritans were treated in Eng- 
land, the Covenanters in Scotland ; you know how 
they bore trial. You have heard of John Graham, 
commonly called Lord Claverhouse. He lived 
about two hundred years ago in England and Scot- 
land, one of that brood of monsters which still dis- 
20* 



234 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



grace mankind, and, as vipers and rattlesnakes, 
seem born to centralize and incarnate the poison 
of the world. An original tormentor, if there had 
never been any cruelty he would have invented it, 
of his own head. Had he lived in New England 
in this time, he would doubtless have been a United 
States commissioner under the Fugitive Slave 
Bill, perhaps a judge or a marshal ; at any rate, a 
slave-hunter, a kidnapper in some form ; and of 
course he would now be as much honored in this 
city as he then was in Edinburgh and London, 
and perhaps as well paid. Well, Lord Claver- 
house had a commission to root out the Covenant- 
ers with fire and sword, and went to that work 
with the zeal of an American kidnapper. By 
means of his marshals he one day caught a Scotch 
girl, a Covenanter. She was young, only eigh- 
teen ; — she was comely to look upon. Her name 
was Margaret. Graham ordered her to be tied 
to a stake in the sea at low-water, and left to drown 
slowly at the advance of the tide. It was done : 
and his creatures — there were enough of them in 
Scotland, as of their descendants here, — his com- 
missioners, his marshals, and his attorneys — sat 
down on the shore to watch the end of poor Mar- 
garet. It was an end not to be forgotten. In a 
clear, sweet voice she sung hymns to God till the 
waves of the sea broke over her head and floated 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



235 



her pious soul to her God and his heaven. Had 
Scotland been a Catholic country there would have 
been another Saint Margaret, known as the 

" Genius of the shore 
In her large recompense, who would be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood." 

You all know what strength of endurance relig- 
ion gave to Bunyan and Fox, and their compeers 
the Quakers, in Boston as well as England ; to 
the Mormons in Missouri, and in all quarters of 
Christendom. Religion made these men formi- 
dably strong. The axe of the tormentor was as 
idle to stay them as the gallows to stop a sun- 
beam. This power of endurance is general, of all 
forms of religion. It does not depend on what is 
Jewish in Judaism, or Christian in Christianity, but 
on what is religious in religion, what is human in 
man. 

But that is only a spasmodic form of heroism, — 
the reaction of human nature against unnatural evil. 
You see religion producing the same strength to 
endure sufferings which are not arbitrarily imposed 
by cruel men. The stories of martyrdom only bring 
out in unusual forms the silent heroism which works 
unheeded in society every day. The strength is 
always there ; oppression, which makes wise men 
mad, in making religious men martyrs, only finds 
and reveals the heroism; it does not make it, more 



236 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



than the stone-cutter makes the marble which he 
hews into the form his thought requires. The he- 
roism is always there. So there is always enough 
electricity in the air above this town to blast it to 
atoms and burn it to cinders. Not a babe could be 
born without it ; not a snow-drop bloom ; yet no 
one heeds the silent force. Let two different 
streams of air, one warm, the other cold, meet here, 
the lightning tells of the reserved power which 
hung all day above our heads. 

I love now and then to look on the strength of 
endurance which religion gives the most heroic 
martyrs. Even in these times the example is 
needed. Though the fagot is only ashes now, 
and the axe's edge is blunt, there are other forms 
of martyrdom, bloodless yet not less cruel in motive 
and effect. But I love best to see this same strength 
in lovelier forms, enduring the common ills of life, — 
poverty, sickness, disappointment, the loss of friends, 
the withering of the fondest hopes of mortal men. 
One is occasional lightning, thundering and grand, 
but transient ; the other is daily sunshine which 
makes no noisy stir on any day, but throughout the 
year is constant, creative, and exceeding beautiful. 

Did you never see a young woman with the 
finest faculties, every hope of mortal success crushed 
in her heart ; see her endure it all, the slow torture 
which eats away the mortal from the immortal, with 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



237 



a spirit still unruffled, — with a calm cheerfulness 
and a strong trust in God ? We all have seen such 
things, — the loveliest forms of martyrdom. 

Did you never see a young man with large 
faculties, fitting him to shine among the loftiest 
stars of this our human heaven, in the name of 
duty forego his own intellectual culture for the 
sake of a mother, a sister, or a father dependent 
upon his toil, and be a drudge when he might else 
have been a shining light ; and by the grace of 
religion do it so that in all of what he counted 
drudgery he was kinglier than a king? Did you 
never see the wife, the daughter, or the son of a 
drunkard sustained by their religion to bear sor- 
rows to which Nebuchadnezzar's sevenfold-heat- 
ed furnace were a rose-garden, — bear it and 
not complain, — grow sweeter in that bitterness ? 
. There are many such examples all about us, and 
holy souls go through that misery of torture clean 
as sunlight through the pestilential air of a town 
stricken with plague. So the pagan poets tell a 
story of the fountain Arethusa, which, for many a 
league, ran through the salt and bitter sea, all the 
way from Peloponnesus to Trinacria, and then 
came up pure, sweet, and sparkling water, far off 
in Ortygia, spreading greenness and growth in the 
valley where the anemone and asphodel paid 



238 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



back their beauty to the stream which gave them 
life. 

Such are daily examples of the fortitude and 
strength to suffer which religion gives. When we 
look carelessly on men in their work or their play, 
busy in the streets or thoughtful in a church, we 
think little of the amount of religion there is in 
these human hearts ; but when you need it in times 
of great trial, then it comes up in the broad streets 
and little lanes of life. Disappointment is a bitter 
root, and sorrow is a bitter flower, and suffering is 
a bitter fruit, but the religious soul makes medi- 
cine thereof, and is strengthened even by the poi- 
sons of life. So out of a brewer's dregs and a 
distiller's waste in a city have I seen the bee suck 
sweetest honey for present joy, and lay it up for 
winter's use. Yea, the strong man in the fable, 
while hungering, found honey in the lion's bones 
he once had slain ; got delight from the destroyer, 
and meat out of the eater's mouth. 

Why is it that the religious man has this power 
to suffer and endure ? Religion is the normal mode 
of life for man, and when he uses his faculties ac- 
cording to their natural law, they act harmoniously, 
and all grow strong. Besides this, the religious 
man has a confidence in his God ; he knows there 
is the Infinite One, who has foreseen all and pro- 



» 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 239 

vided for all, — provided a recompense for all the 
unavoidable suffering of his children here. If you 
know that it is a part of the purpose of the Infinite 
Father that you must suffer to accomplish your 
own development, or the development of mankind, 
yet understand that the suffering must needs be 
a good for you, — then you will not fear. "The 
flesh may quiver as the pincers tear," but you 
quiver not ; the will is firm, and firm is the un- 
conquerable trust. " Be still, O flesh, and burn ! " 
says the martyr to the molecules of dust that form 
his chariot of time, and the three holy children of 
the Hebrew tale sing psalms in their fiery furnace, 
a Fourth with them ; and Stephen in his stoning 
thinks that he sees his God, and to Paul in his 
prison there comes a great, cheering light; — yes, 
to Bunyan, and Fox, and Latimer, and John Rog- 
ers, in their torments ; to the poor maiden stifled 
by the slowly strangling sea ; to her whose crystal 
urn of love is shattered at her feet ; to the young 
man who sees the college of his dream fade off 
into a barn ; and the mother, wife, or child who 
sees the father of the family bloat, deform, and 
uglify himself into the drunkard, and, falling into 
the grave, crush underneath his lumbering weight 
all of their mortal hopes. Religion gives them all 
a strength to suffer, and be blessed by the trials they 
endure. There are times when nothing outward 



240 CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 

is left but suffering. Then it is a great thing to 
have the stomach for it, the faith in God which 
disenchants the soul of pain. Did not Jesus, in 
the Gospel, have his agony and his bloody sweat, 
— the last act of that great tragedy? did not re- 
ligion come, an angel, to strengthen him, and all 
alone, deserted, forsaken, he could say, " I am not 
alone, for the Father is with me ? " 

" The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 

Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 

By acquiescence in the Will supreme, 

For time and for eternity, by Faith, 

Faith absolute in God, including Hope, 

And the defence that lies in boundless love 

Of His perfection ; with habitual dread 

Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 

Impatiently, ill done or left undone, 

To the dishonor of His holy Name. 

Soul of our souls and safeguard of the world ! 

Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart. 
Eestore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine. 

" Come labor, when the worn-out frame requires 
Perpetual sabbath ; come disease and want, 
And sad exclusion through decay of sense ; 
But leave me unabated trust in Thee ; — 
And let Thy favor to the end of life 
Sustain me with ability to seek 
Kepose and hope among eternal things, 
Father of earth and heaven ! and I am rich, 
And will possess my portion in content." 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



241 



See this same strength in another form, — the 
power to do. Religion not only gives the femi- 
nine capacity to suffer, but the masculine capabil- 
ity to do. The religious man can do more than 
another without religion, who is -his equal in other 
respects ; because he masters and concentrates his 
faculties, making them work in harmony with each 
other, in concord with mankind, in unity with 
God; and because he knows there is a God who 
works with him, and so arranges the forces of the 
universe, that every wrong shall be righted, and 
the ultimate well-being of each be made sure of 
for ever. Besides, he has a higher inspiration and 
loftier motive, which strengthen, refine, and enno- 
ble him. Adam Clarke tells us how much more of 
mere intellectual labor he could perform after his 
conversion than before. Ignatius Loyola makes 
the same confession. They each attribute it to 
the technical peculiarity of their sectarianism, to 
Methodism or Catholicism, to Christianity; but 
the fact is universal, and applies to religion under 
all forms. It is easily explained by the' greater 
harmony of the faculties, and by the higher motive 
which animates the man, the more certain trust 
which inspires him. An earnest youth in love 
with an earnest maid, — his love returned, — gets 
more power of character from the ardor of her 
affection and the strength of his passion ; and 
21 



242 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



when the soul of man rises up in its great act of 
love to become one with God, you need not marvel 
if the man is strong. "lean do all things,", says 
Paul, " through Christ who strengtheneth me." 
Buddhists and Hebrews and Mohammedans say 
the same of their religion. 

Then religion helps a man to two positive things, 
— first, to a desire of the right ; next, to a progres- 
sive knowledge and practice of the right. Jus- 
tice is always power ; whoso has that commands 
the world. A fool in the right way, says the prov- 
erb, can beat a wise man in the wrong. The 
civilized man has an advantage over the savage, in 
his knowledge of Nature. He can make the forces 
of the universe toil for him : the wind drives his 
ship ; the water turns his mill, spins, and weaves 
for him ; lightning runs his errands ; steam carries 
the new lord of Nature 'over land or ocean without 
rest. He that knows justice, and does it, has the 
same advantage over all that do it not. He sets 
his mill on the rock, and the river of God for ever 
turns his wheels. 

The practice of the right in the common affairs 
of life is called Honesty. An honest man is one 
who knows, loves, and does right because it is 
right. Is there any thing but this total integrity 
which I call religion, that can be trusted to keep a 



■ SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 243 

man honest in small things and great things, in 
things private and things public ? I know nothing 
else with this power. True it is said, " Honesty- 
is the best policy ; " and as all men love the best 
policy, they will be honest for that reason. But to 
follow the best policy is a very different thing from 
being honest ; the love of justice and the love of 
personal profit or pleasure are quite different. But 
is honesty the best policy ? Policy is means to 
achieve a special end. If the end you seek be the 
common object of desire. — if it be material pleas- 
ure in your period of passion, or material profit in 
your period of ambition, — if you seek for money, 
for ease, honor, power over men, and their approba- 
tion, — then honesty is not the best policy; is means 
from it, not to it. Honesty of thought and speech 
is the worst policy for a minister's clerical reputa- 
tion. Charity impairs an estate; unpopular excel- 
lence is the ruin of a mairs respectability. It is 
good policy to lie in the popular way : to steal after 
the respectable fashion. The hard creditor is surest 
of his debt ; the cruel landlord does not lose his 
rent ; the severe master is uniformly served the best ; 
who gives little and with a grudge finds often the 
most of obvious gratitude. He that destroys the 
perishing is more honored in Christendom than he 
who comes to save the lost. The slave-hunter is a 
popular Christian in the American Church, and gets 



244 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



his pay in money and ecclesiastical reputation. 
The honesty of Jesus brought him to the bar of 
Herod and Pilate ; their best policy nailed him to 
the cross. Was it good policy in Paul to turn 
Christian ? His honesty brought him to weariness 
and painfullness, to cold and nakedness, to stripes 
and imprisonment, to a hateful reputation on the 
earth. Honesty the best policy for personal selfish- 
ness ! Ask the " Holy Alliance." Honesty is the 
means to self-respect, to growth in manly qualities, 
to high human welfare, — a means to the kingdom 
of heaven. When men claim that honesty is the 
best policy, is it this which they mean ? 

I will not say a man cannot be honest without 
a distinct consciousness of his relation to God ; but 
I must say, that consciousness of God is a great 
help to honesty in the business of a shop, or the 
business of a nation ; and without religion, uncon- 
scious if no more, it seems to me honesty is not 
possible. 

By reminding me of my relation to the universe, 
religion helps counteract the tendency to selfishness. 
Self-love is natural and indispensable ; it keeps the 
man whole, — is the centripetal power, representing 
the natural cohesion of all the faculties. Without 
that, the man would drop to pieces, as it were, and 
be dissolved in the mass of men, as a lump of clay 
in the ocean. Selfishness is the abnormal excess of 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



245 



this self-love. It takes various forms. In the period 
of passion, it commonly shows itself as intemperate 
love of sensual pleasure ; in the period of ambition, 
as intemperate love of money, of power, rank, or 
renown. There are as many modes of selfishness 
as there are propensities which may go to excess. 
Self-love belongs to the natural harmony of the 
faculties, and is a means of strength. Selfishness 
comes from the tyranny of some one appetite, which 
subordinates the other faculties of man, and is a 
cause of weakness, a disqualification for my duties 
to myself, to my brother, and my God. Now the 
effort to become religious, working in you a love of 
man and of God, a desire of harmony with yourself, 
of concord with man and unity with Him, dimin- 
ishes selfishness, develops your instinctive self-love 
into conscious self-respect, into faithfulness to your- 
self, and so enlarges continually the little ring of 
your character, and makes you strong to bear the 
crosses and do the duties of daily life. 

Much of a man's ability consists in his power to 
concentrate his energies for a purpose ; in power to 
deny some private selfish lust — of material pleasure 
or profit — for the sake of public love. I know of 
naught but religion that can be trusted to promote 
this power of self-denial, which is indispensable to 
a manly man. There can be no great general 
power without this ; no strong character that lies 
21* 

Iff 1 



246 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



deep in the sea, and holds on its way through sun- 
shine and through storm, and unabashed by tem- 
pests, comes safe to port. I suppose you all know 
men and women, who now are not capable of 
any large self-denial, — the babies of mere selfish 
instinct. It is painful to look on such, domineered 
over by their propensities. Compared to noble- 
hearted men and women, they are as the mushroom 
and the toadstool to the oak, under whose shade the 
fungus springs up in a rainy night to blacken and 
perish in a day. Self-denial is indispensable to a 
strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes 
only of a religious stock, — from consciousness of ob- 
ligation and dependence upon God. 

In youth the seductions of passion lead us easily 
astray ; in manhood there are the more dangerous 
seductions of ambition, when lust of pleasure gives 
way to lust of profit ; and in old age the man is 
often the victim of the propensities he delicately 
nursed in earlier life, and dwindles down into the 
•dotage of a hunker or a libertine. It is easy to yield 
now to this, and then to that, but both mislead us 
to our partial and general loss, to weakness of power 
iand poverty of achievement, to shipwreck of this 
great argosy of mortal life. How many do you see 
slain by lust of pleasure ! How many more by lust 
•of power, — pecuniary, social, or political power ! 
Religious self-denial would have kept them strong 
and beautiful and safe. 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



247 



Religion gives a man courage. I do not mean 
the courage which comes of tough muscles and rigid 
nerves, — of a stomach which never surrenders. 
That also is a good thing, the hardihood of the 
flesh; let me do it no injustice. But I mean the 
higher, moral courage, which can look danger and 
death in the face unawed and undismayed ; the 
courage that can encounter loss of ease, of wealth, 
of friends, of your own good name ; the courage 
that can face a world full of howling and of scorn, 
— ay, of loathing and of hate ; can see all this with 
a smile, and, suffering it all, can still toil on, con- 
scious of the result, yet fearless still. I do not mean 
the courage that hates, that smites, that kills, but 
the calm courage that loves and heals and blesses 
such as smite and hate and kill ; the courage that 
dares resist evil, popular, powerful, anointed evil, 
yet does it with good, and knows it shall thereby 
overcome. That is not a common quality. I think 
it never comes without religion. It belongs to all 
great forms of religious excellence; it is not specifi- 
cally Hebrew or Christian, but generically human 
and of religion under all forms. 

Without this courage a man looks little and 
mean, especially a man otherwise great, — with 
great intellect, and great culture, and occupying a 
great place. You see all about you how little such 
men are worth ; too cowardly to brave a temporary 



248 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



defeat, they are swiftly brought to permanent ruin. 
Look over the long array of brilliant names in 
American. English, universal history, and see what 
lofty men, born to a large estate of intellect, and 
disciplined to manifold and brilliant mental power, 
for lack of courage to be true amid the false, and 
upright amid the grovelling, have laid their proud 
foreheads in the dust, and mean men have tri- 
umphed over the mighty ! 

Did you never read here in your Old Testament, 
here in your New Testament, here in your Apocry- 
pha, how religion gave men, yea, and women too, 
this courage, and said to them, " Be strong and very 
courageous ; turn not to the right hand, neither 
to the left," — and made heroes out of Jeremiah 
and Elias ? Did you never read of the strength of 
courage, the courage of conscience, which religion 
gave to the "unlearned and ignorant men," who, 
from peasants that trembled before a Hebrew 
Rabbi's copious beard, became apostles to stand 
before the wrath of kings and not quake, to found 
churches by their prayers, and to feed them with 
their blood ? You know, we all know, what cour- 
age conscious religion gave to our fathers. Their 
corporal courage grew more firmly knit, as men 
learned by bitter blows who crossed swords with 
them on the battle field ; but their moral courage 
grew giant high. You know how they dwelt here, 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



249 



amid what suffering, yet with what patience ; how 
they toiled to build up these houses, these churches, 
and the institutions of the State. 

With this honesty, this self-denial, there comes 
a total energy of character which nothing else can 
give. You see what strength religion gives ; what 
energy and continual persistence in their cause it 
gave to men like the Apostles, like the martyrs and 
great saints of the Christian Church, of the Hebrew, 
the Mohammedan, and the Pagan Church. You 
may see this energy in a rough form in the soldiers 
of the English revolution, in the " Ironsides " of 
Cromwell; in the stern and unflinching endurance 
of the Puritans of either England, the Old or the 
New, who both did and suffered what is possible to 
mortal flesh only when it is sustained by a religious 
faith. But you see it in forms far more beautiful, 
as represented by the missionaries who carry the 
glad tidings of their faith to other lands, and endure 
the sorrows of persecution with the longsuffering 
and loving-kindness we worship in the good God. 
This is not peculiar to Christianity. The Buddhists 
had their missionaries hundreds of years before 
Jesus of Nazareth first saw the light. They seem 
to have been the first that ever went abroad, not to 
conquer, but convert ; not to get power, or wealth, 
or even wisdom, but to carry the power of the mind, 



250 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



the riches of conscience and the affections, and the 
wisdom of the soul ; and in them you find the total 
energy which religious conviction gives to manly 
character in its hour of peril. But why go abroad 
to look for this ? Our own streets exhibit the same 
thing in the form of the philanthropist. The Sister 
of Charity treads the miserable alleys of Naples and 
of Rome ; the Catholic Visitor of the Poor winds 
along in the sloughs and slums of St. Giles's Parish 
in Protestant London, despised and hated by the 
well-endowed clergy, whose church aisles are never 
trodden save by wealthy feet ; and in the mire of the 
street, in the reeking squalidness of the cellars, 
where misery burrows with crime, he labors for their 
bodies and their souls. In our own Boston do 
I not know feeble-bodied and delicate women, 
who with their feet write out the gospel of loving- 
kindness and tender mercy on the mud or the 
snow of the kennels of this city, — women of 
wise intellect and nice culture, who, like that great 
philanthropist, come to seek and to save that which 
is lost ! 

Look at the reformers of America at this day ; — 
some of them men of large abilities, of commen- 
surate culture, of easy estate, once respected, flat- 
tered, and courted too by their associates, but now 
despised for their justice and their charity, hated 
for the eminent affection which makes them look 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



251 



after the welfare of the criminal, the drunkard, the 
pauper, the outcast, and the slave, and feared for the 
power with which they assert the rights of man 
against the wrongs which avarice inflicts. See the 
total energy which marks these men, whose life is a 
long profession of religion, — their creed writ all 
over the land, and their history a slow martyrdom, 
— and you may see the vigor which comes of relig- 
ious conviction. These are the nobler forms of 
energy. The soldier destroys, at best defends, while 
the philanthropist creates. 

Last of all these forms of strength, religion gives 
the power of self-reliance ; reliance on your mind 
for truth, on your conscience for justice, on your 
heart for love, on your soul for faith, and through 
all these reliance on the Infinite God. Then you 
will keep the integrity of your own nature spite of 
the mightiest men, spite of a multitude of millions, 
spite of States and churches and traditions, and a 
worldly world filled with covetousness and priest- 
craft. You will say to them all, " Stand by, and 
let alone ; I must be true to myself, and thereby 
true to my God." 

I think nothing but religion can give any man this 
strength to do and to suffer ; that without this, the 



252 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



men of greatest gift and greatest attainment too, 
do not live out half the glory of their days, nor 
reach half their stature. Look over the list of the 
world's great failures, and see why Alexander, 
Caesar, and Napoleon came each to such an un- 
timely and vulgar end ! Had they added religion 
to their attainments and their conquests, what em- 
pires of welfare would they not hold in fee, and give 
us to enjoy ! Without it, the greatest man is a 
failure. With it, the smallest is a triumph. He 
adds to his character; he enjoys his strength; he 
delights while he rejoices, growing to more vigorous 
manliness ; and when the fragrant petals of the spirit 
burst asunder and crowd off this outer husk of the 
body, and bloom into glorious humanity, what a 
strong and flamelike flower shall blossom there for 
everlasting life. 

There are various forms of strength. Wealth is 
power ; office is power ; beauty is power ; knowl- 
edge is power. Religion too is power. This is the 
power of powers, for it concentrates, moves, and 
directs aright the force of money, of office, of beauty, 
and of knowledge. Do men understand this ? 
They often act and live as if they knew it not. 
Look at our " strong men," not only mighty by 
position in office or on money, but mighty by na- 
ture. In what are they strong ? In a knowledge of 
the passions and prejudices of men ; of the interests 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



253 



and expedients and honors of the day ; in a knowl- 
edge of men's selfishness and their willingness to 
sin ; in experienced skill to use the means for cer- 
tain selfish, low, and ignoble ends, organizing a con- 
trivance against mankind ; in power of speech and 
act to make the better seem the worse, and wrong 
assume the guise of right. It is in this that our 
" great men " are chiefly great. They are weak in 
a knowledge of what in man is noble, even when he 
errs ; they know nothing of justice ; they care little 
for love. They know the animal that is in us, not 
the human, far less the godlike. Mighty in cunning, 
they are weak in knowledge of the true, the just, the 
good, the holy, and the ever-beautiful. They look 
up at the mountains and mock at God. So they 
are impotent to know the expedient of eternity, 
what profits now and profits for ever and ever. 
Blame them not too much ; the educational forces 
of society breed up such men, as college lads all 
learn to cipher and to scan. 

In the long run of the ages see how the religious 
man distances the unreligious. The memory of him 
who seeks to inaugurate cunning into the state 
for his own behoof, is erelong gibbeted before the 
world, and his lie is cast out with scorn and hate ; 
and the treason of the traitor to mankind is remem- 
bered only with a curse ; while the wisdom of the 

22 



254 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 



wise, the justice of the upright, the love of the affec- 
tionate, and the piety of holy-hearted men, incar- 
nated in the institutions of the State, live and will 
for ever live, long after Rome and America have 
gone to the ground. Tyrants have a short breath, 
their fame a sudden ending; and the power of the un- 
godly, like the lamp of the wicked, shall soon be put 
out ; their counsel is carried, but it is carried head- 
long. He that seeks only the praise of men gets 
that but for a day ; while the religious man, who 
seeks only to be faithful to himself and his God, and 
represent on earth the absolute true and just, all 
heedless of the applause of men, lives, and will for 
ever live, in the admiration of mankind, and in " the 
pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 
Champollion painfully deciphers the names of the 
Egyptian kings who built the pyramids and swayed 
millions of men. For three thousand years that 
lettered Muse, the sculptured stone, in silence kept 
the secret of their name. But the fugitive slave, a 
bondsman of that king, with religion in his heart, 
has writ his power on all the continents, and dotted 
the name of Moses on every green or snow-clad 
isle of either sea. That name shall still endure 
when the last stones of the last pyramid become gas 
and exhale to heaven. The peasant of Gajilee has 
embosomed his own name in the religion of man- 



SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 



255 



kind, and the world will keep it for ever. Foolish 
men ! building your temple of fame on the expedi- 
ents of to-day, and of selfishness and cunning and 
eloquent falsehood ! That shall stand, — will it ? 
On the frozen bosom of a northern lake go, build 
your palace of ice. Colonnade and capital, how 
they glitter in the light when the northern dawn is 
red about the pole, or the colder moon looks on 
your house of frost! " This will endure. Why 
carve out the granite, and painfully build upon the 
rock ? " Ah me ! at the touch of March, the ice- 
temple and its ice-foundation take the leap of 
Niagara ; and in April the skiff of the fisherman 
finds no vestige of all that pomp and pride. But 
the temple of granite, — where is that ? Ask Moses, 
ask Jesus, ask mankind, what power it is that lasts 
from age to age, when selfish ambition melts in the 
stream of time. 

Well, we are all here for a great work, not merely 
to grow up and eat and drink, to have estates called 
after us and children born in our name. We are 
all here to be men ; to do the most of human duty 
possible for us, and so to have the most of human 
right and enjoy the most of human welfare. Re- 
ligion is a good thing in itself ; it is the betrothed 
bride of the spirit of man, to be loved for her own 
sweet sake ; not a servant, to be taken for use 



256 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



alone. But it is the means to this end. — to 
strength of character, enlarging the little and great- 
enins^ the oreat. 

You and I shall have enough to suffer, most of 
us ; enough to do. We shall have our travail, our 
temptation, perhaps our agony, but our triumph too. 

O smooth-faced youths and maids ! your cheek 
and brow yet innocent of stain, do you believe you 
shall pass through life and suffer naught ? Trial 
will come on you; — you shall have your agony 
and bloody sweat. Seek in the beginning for the 
strength which religion brings you, and you shall 
indeed be strong, powerful to suffer, and mighty also 
to do. I will not say your efforts will keep you 
from every error, every sin. When a boy, I might 
have thought so ; as a man, I know better, by ob- 
servation and my own experience too. Sin is an 
experiment that fails ; a stumble, not upright walk- 
ing. Expect such mishaps, errors of the mind, 
errors of the conscience, errors of the affections, 
errors of the soul. What pine-tree never lost a 
limb? The best mathematician now and then 
misses a figure, must rub out his work and start 
anew. The greatest poet must often mend a line, 
and will write faulty verses in the heat of song. 
Milton has many a scraggy line, and even good 
Homer sometimes nods. What defects are there in 



SOURCE OP STRENGTH. 



257 



the proud works of Raphael and Angelo ! Is there 
no failure in Mozart ? In such a mighty work as 
this of life, such a complication of forces within, of 
circumstances without, such imperfect guidance as 
the world can furnish in this work, I should expect 
to miss the way sometimes, and with painful feet, 
and heart stung by self-reproach, or grief, or shame, 
retread the way shamefaced and sad. The field 
that is ploughed all over by Remorse, driving his 
team that breathe fire, yields not a faint harvest 
to the great Reaper's hand. Trust in God will do 
two things. It will keep you from many an error ; 
nobody knows how great a gain this is, till he has 
tried. Then it will help you after you have wan- 
dered from the way. Fallen, you will not despair, 
but rise the wiser and the stronger for the fall. Do 
you look for strength to your brave young hearts, 
and streams of life to issue thence ? Here you 
shall find it, and with freshened life pass on your 
way. Religion is the Moses to smite the rock in 
the wilderness. 

O bearded men, and women that have kept and 
hoarded much in your experienced hearts ! you also 
seek for power to bear your crosses and to do your 
work. Religion will be the strength of your life, — 
you may do all things through this. When the last 
act of the mortal drama draws towards a close, you 
22* 



258 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION. 



will look joyfully to the end, not with fear, but with 
a triumphant joy. 

There are two great things which make up the 
obvious part of life, — to do, to suffer. Behind both 
as cause, and before each as result, is one thing 
greater, — to be. Religion is true Being, normal 
life in yourself, in Nature, in men, and in God. 



VIII. 



OF CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF JOY. 



L WILL GO UNTO GOD, MY EXCEEDING JOY. — Ps. xliii. 4. 

Joy is not often mentioned in religious books. 
It is sometimes thought to have no place in relig- 
ion ; at least none here and now. The joy of the 
religious man is thought to be chiefly in the future. 
Religion is painted with a sad countenance. Artists 
sometimes mix joyous colors in their representations 
thereof, but theologians almost never. With them, 
religion is gloomy, severe, and grim. This is emi- 
nently the case in New England. The Puritans as 
a class were devoutly religious in their way, but 
they were sad men ; they had many fast-days and 
few times of rejoicing. Even Sunday, which to the 
rest of Christendom was an occasion of festivity, 
was to them a day of grimness and of fearing the 
Lord ; a weariness to the old men, and an intoler- 
able burden to the children. Look at the pictures 



260 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



of those men, so bony and gaunt and grim ; of the 
women, so austere and unloving in their look. The 
unjoyous characteristics of Puritanism still cleave to 
us, and color our mode of religion at this day, and, 
spite of ourselves, taint our general philosophy and 
view of life. 

The Catholic Church is less serious, less in ear- 
nest with religion, than the Church of the Puritans, 
— less moral and reliant on God than the Protestant 
'Church in general, — so it seems to me; but even 
there little room is left for joy. Their richest music 
is a Miserere, not an Exultemiis or a Te Deum. 
The joyous chanting of Christmas, of Easter, and 
of Pentecost is inferior to the sad wail of Palm-Sun- 
day and Good-Friday. The Stabat Mater and the 
Dies Irce are the most characteristic hymns of the 
Catholic Church. The paintings and statues are 
chiefly monuments of woe, — saints in their tor- 
ments, Jesus in his passion ; his stations are stations 
of affliction, and the via sacra of his life is painted 
as a long via dolorosa; God is represented as a 
Thunderer, distinguished chiefly by self-esteem and 
destructiveness. 

Take the Christian Church as a whole, from its 
.first day to this, study all expressions of the religious 
feeling and thought of Christendom, in literature, 
painting, and music, it is strangely deficient in joy. 
Religion is unnatural self-denial ; morality is sym- 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



261 



bolized by a celibate monk, eating parched pease 
and a water-cress ; piety, by a joyless nun. The 
saints of the Christian Church, Catholic and Prot- 
estant, are either stern, heroic men, who went first 
and foremost on a field of battle, to peril their lives, 
men whose heroism was of iron, — and they have 
never been extolled above their merit, — or else 
weeping men, sentimental, sickly, sad, sorrowful, 
and afraid. Most preachers would rather send away 
their audience weeping, than with a resolute, a 
cheerful, and a joyous heart. Yet nothing is easier 
to start from a multitude than a tear. Cotton 
Mather, in his life of his kinsman, Nathaniel, a 
pious clergyman who died young, mentions as his 
crowning merit the fulness of his fastings, the abun- 
dant mortifications he needlessly imposed upon him- 
self, his tear-stained face. Smiles are strange phe- 
nomena in a church ; sadness and tears are therein 
at home. 

Even the less earnest sects of America, calling 
themselves " Liberal Christians," whose ship of 
souls does not lie very deep in the sea of life, seem 
to think joy is not very nearly related to religion. 
The piety of a round-faced and joyous man is 
always a little suspected. The Cross is still the 
popular symbol of Christianity, and the type of the 
saint is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, 
having no form or comeliness. Sermons of joy you 



262 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



seldom hear ; the voice of the pulpit is mainly a 
whine ; its flowers are nightshade, and its psalms a 
Miserere. 

Everybody knows what joy is, — a certain sense 
of gladness and of pleasure, a contentment and a 
satisfaction, sometimes noisily breaking into tran- 
sient surges of rapture, sometimes rolling with the 
tranquil swell of calm delight. It is a state which 
comes upon any particular faculty, when that finds 
its natural gratification. So there may be a partial 
joy of any one faculty, or a total joy of the whole 
man, all the faculties normally developed and nor- 
mally gratified. If religion be the service of God 
by the normal development, use, and enjoyment of 
every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, 
and every power acquired over matter or man, then 
it is plain that religion must always aim at, and un- 
der favorable circumstances will achieve, a complete 
and total joy for all men. 

There is no man wholly destitute of some par- 
tial and transient joy ; for if all the conditions need- 
ful to the welfare of each faculty of mind, or to each 
appetite, were wanting, then, part by part, the man 
would perish and disappear. On the other hand, no 
man, I think, has ever had a complete, total, and 
permanent enjoyment of every part of his nature. 
That is the ideal to which we tend, but one not 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



263 



capable of complete attainment in a progressive 
beins:. For if the ideal of yesterday has become 
the actual of to-day, to-morrow Ave are seized with 
manly disquiet and unrest, and soar up towards 
another ideal. 

We have all more or less of joy, the quantity and 
quality differing amazingly amongst men. There 
are as many forms of joy as there are propensities 
which hunger and thirst after their satisfaction. 
What a difference in the source whence men derive 
their customary delight. 

Here is a man whose whole joy seems to come 
from his body ; not from its nobler senses, offering 
him the pleasures of the ear and the eye, but from 
the lower parts of the flesh, imbruted now to pas- 
sions which seem base when made to minister the 
chief delight to man. We could not think highly 
of one who knew no joy above the pleasure of eat- 
ing and drinking, or of any other merely animal 
satisfaction. Such joys cannot raise man far. If 
one had his chief delight in fine robes, the taste 
would rather degrade him. Yet these two appetites, 
for finery in food and finery in dress, have doubtless 
done their part to civilize mankind. It is surely 
better for the race to rejoice in all the sumptuous 
delicacies of art, than to feed precariously on wild 
acorns which the wind shakes down. The foolish 
fondness for gay apparel has served a purpose. 



264 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



Nay, so marvellous is the economy of God in his 
engineering of the world, that no drop of waste 
water runs over the dam of the universe : and as 
the atom which now sparkles in the rainbow, the 
next minute shall feed a fainting rose, so even these 
sensual desires have helped to uplift mankind from 
mere subordination to the material world. 

There is another man whose chief joy is not 
merely bodily, but yet resides in his selfish appe- 
tites, in his lust of money, or lust of power. I pass 
by the joy of the miser, of the ambitious politician, 
of the pirate and the kidnapper. They are so well 
known amongst us that you can easily estimate 
their worth. 

Now and then we find men whose happiness 
comes almost wholly from pure and lofty springs, 
from the high senses of the body or the high facul- 
ties of the spirit, — joys of the mind, of the con- 
science, of the affections, of the soul. Difference of 
quality is more important than difference in mere 
bulk ; an hour of love is worth an age of lust. We 
all look with some reverence on such as seek the 
higher quality of joy. 

You are pleased to see birds feeding their wide- 
mouthed little ones ; sheep and oxen intent upon 
their grassy bread; reapers under a hedge enjoying 
their mid-day meal, reposing on sheaves of corn 
new cut. All this is nature ; the element of neces- 



SOURCE OF JOT. 



265 



sity consecrates the meal. Artistic pictures of such 
scenes are always attractive. But pictures or de- 
scriptions of feasts — where the design is not to 
satisfy a natural want, but where eating and drink- 
ing are made a luxurious art,, the end of life, and 
man seems only an appendage to the table — are 
never wholly pleasing. You feel a little ashamed 
of the quality of such delight. Even the marvel- 
lous pencil of Paul of Verona here fails to please. 
But a picture of men finding a joy in the higher 
senses, still more in thought, in the common, every- 
day duties of life, in works of benevolence or justice,, 
in the delight of love, in contemplation, or in prayer^ 
— this can touch us all. We like the quality of 
such delight, and love to look on men in such a 
mood of joy. I need only refer to the most admired 
paintings of the great masters, Dutch or Italian, and 
to the poetry which chronicles the mortal modes of 
high delight. The spiritual element must subordi*- 
nate the material, in order to make the sensual joy 
welcome to a nice eye. In the Saint Cecilia of Ra~ 
phael, in Titian's Marriage at Cana, in Leonardo's 
Last Supper, it is the preponderance of spiritual 
over sensuous emotion that charms the eye. So is 
it in all poetry, from the feeding of the five thou- 
sand to the sweet story of Lorenzo and Jessica, and 
the moonlight scene of their love whereby " heaven 
is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." 
23 



266 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 



The joy of a New England miser, gloating over 
extortions which even the law would cough at, the 
delight of a tyrant clutching at power, of a Boston 
kidnapper griping some trembling slave, or counting 
out the price of blood which a wicked government 
bribes him withal, — that would hardly be accept- 
able even here and to-day,* though painted with the 
most angelic power and skill. It would be a painted 
satire, not a pictured praise ; the portrait of a devil's 
joy can be no man's delight. 

Everybody knows the joy of the senses. The 
higher faculties have a corresponding joy. As there 
is a scale of faculties ascending from the sense of 
touch and taste, the first developed and most widely 
spread in the world of living things, up to affection, 
rejoicing to delight, and to the religious emotions 
which consciously connect us with the Infinite God ; 
so there is a corresponding scale of joys, delight 
rising above delight, from the baby fed by his 
mother's breast to the most experienced man, en- 
larged by science and by art, filled with a tranquil 
trust in the infinite protection of the all-bounteous 
God. The higher the faculty, the more transcen- 
dent is its joy. 



* This sermon was preached April 6, 1851, presently after the 
kidnapping of Mr. Sims, in Boston, and before his " trial " was 
completed. 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



267 



The partial and transient joy of any faculty 
comes from the fractional and brief fulfilment of 
the conditions of its nature ; the complete and per- 
manent joy of the whole man comes from a total 
and continuous supply of the conditions of the 
entire nature of man. 

Now, for this complete and lasting joy, these con- 
ditions must be thus fulfilled for me as an individ- 
ual, for my family, for my neighborhood, for the 
nation, and for the world, else my joy is not com- 
plete ; for though I can in thought for a moment 
abstract myself from the family, society, nation, and 
from all mankind, it is but for a moment. Practi- 
cally I am bound up with all the world ; an integer 
indeed, but a fraction of mankind. I cannot enjoy 
my daily bread because of the hunger of the men I 
fain would feed. I am not wholly and long de- 
lighted with a book relating some new wonder of 
science, or offering me some jewelled diadem of 
literary art, because, I think straightway of the 
thousand brother men in this town to whom even 
the old wonders of science and the ancient diadems 
of literary art are all unknown. The morsel that I 
eat alone is -not sweet, because the fatherless has 
not eaten it with me. Yet we all desire this com- 
plete joy ; we are not content without it ; I feel 
it belongs to me, to all men, as individuals and as 
fractions of society. When mankind comes of age, 



268 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



he must enter on this estate. The very desire 
thereof shows it is a part of the Divine plan of 
the world, for each natural desire has the means to 
satisfy it put somewhere in the universe, and there 
is a mutual attraction between the two, which at 
last must meet. Natural desire is the prophecy of 
satisfaction. 

Look over the bountiful distribution of joy in the 
world. It abounds in the lower walks of creation. 
The young fish, you shall even now find on the 
shallow beaches of some sheltered Atlantic bay, how 
happy they are ! Voiceless, dwelling in the cold 
unsocial element of water, moving with the flapping 
of the sea, and never still amid the ocean waves' im- 
measurable laugh, — how delighted are these little 
children of God ! Their life seems one continuous 
holiday, the shoal waters a play-ground. Their food 
is plenteous as the water itself. Society is abun- 
dant, and of the most unimpeachable respectability. 
They have their little child's games which last all 
day. No one is hungry, ill-mannered, ill-dressed, 
dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no 
hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little 
atomies seem ever full of joy as they can hold ; wise 
without study, learned enough with no book or 
school, and well cared for amid their own neglect. 
They recollect no past, they provide for no future, 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



269 



the great God of the ocean their only memory or 
forethought. These little, short-lived minnows are 
to me a sermon eloquent ; they are a psalm to God, 
above the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar, or of 
the Hebrew king. 

On the land, see the joy of the insects just now 
coming into life. The new-born butterfly, who 
begins his summer life to-day, how joyous he is in 
his claret-colored robe, so daintily set off with a sil- 
ver edge ! No Pharisee, enlarging the borders of 
his garments, getting greetings in the markets and 
the uppermost seat at feasts, and called of men 
" Rabbi," is ever so brimful of glee as our little 
silver-bordered fly, He has a low seat in the uni- 
verse, for he is only a butterfly ; but to him it is 
good as the uppermost ; and in the sunny, sheltered 
spots in the woods, with brown leaves about him, 
and the promise of violets and five-fingers by and 
by, the great sun gently greets him, and the dear 
God continually says to this son of a worm, " Come 
up higher ! " 

The adventurous birds that .have just come to 
visit us, how delighted they are, and of a bright 
morning how they tell their joy ! each robin and 
blackbird waking, not with a dry mouth and a 
parched tongue, but with a bosom full of morning 
psalms to gladden the day with " their sweet jargon- 
ing." What a cheap luxury they pick up in the 
23* 



270 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



dfields ; and in a clear sunrise and a warm sky find a 
■delight which makes the pomp of Nebuchadnezzar 
seem ridiculous ! 

Even the reptiles, the cold snake, the bunchy and 
-calumniated toad, the frog, now newly wakened 
from his hybernating sleep, have a joy in their ex- 
istence which is complete and seems perfect. How 
that long symbol of " the old enemy " basks de- 
lighted in the sun ! In the idle days which in child- 
hood I once had, I have seen, as I thought, the gos- 
pel of God's love written in the life of this reptile, 
for whom Christians have such a mythological 
hatred, but whom the good God blesses with a new, 
shining skin every year, — written more clearly than 
even Nazarene Jesus could tell the tale. No won- 
der ! it was the dear God who wrote His gospel in 
that scroll. How joyously the frogs welcome in the 
spring, which knocks at the icy door of their dwell- 
ing, and rouses them to new life ! What delight 
have they in their thin, piping notes at this time, 
and in the hoarse thunders wherewith they will 
shake the bog in weeks to come ; in their wooing 
and their marriage song ! 

The young of all animals are full of delight. 
God baptizes his new-born children of the air, the 
tland, the sea, with joy ; admits them to full com- 
munion in his great church, where He that taketh 
thought for oxen suffers no sparrow to fall to the 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



271 



ground without his fatherly love. A new lamb, or 
calf, or colt, just opening its eyes on the old world, 
is happy as fabled Adam in his Eden. With what 
sportings, and friskings, and frolickings do all young 
animals celebrate their Advent and Epiphany in the 
world of time! As they grow older, they have a 
wider and a wiser joy, — the delight of the passions 
and the affections, to apply the language of men to 
the consciousness of the cattle. It takes the form, 
not of rude leapings, but of quiet cheerfulness. The 
matronly cow, ruminating beside her playful and 
hornless little one, is a type of quiet joy and entire 
satisfaction, — all her nature clothed in well-befit- 
ting happiness. 

Even animals that we think austere and sad, — 
the lonely hawk, the solitary jay, who loves New 
England winters, and the innumerable shellfish, — 
have their personal and domestic joy, well known to 
their intimate acquaintances. The toad whom we 
vilify as ugly, and even call venomous, malicious, 
and spiteful, is a kind neighbor, and seems as con- 
tented as the day is long. So is it with the spider, 
who is not the malignant kidnapper that he is 
thought, but has a little, harmless world of joy. A 
stream of welfare flows from end to end of their 
little life, — not very broad, not very deep, but wide 
and deep enough to bathe their every limb, and 
bring contentment and satisfaction to each want. 



272 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



Did not the same God who pours out the light from 
yonder golden sun, and holds all the stars in his 
leash of love, make and watch over the smallest of 
these creatures ? Nay, He who leaves not forsaken 
Jesus alone never deserts the spider and the toad. 

Wait a few weeks and go into the fields, of a 
warm day, at morning, noon, or night, and all crea- 
tion is a-hum with happiness, the young and old, 
the reptile, insect, beast, and fowls of heaven, rejoice 
in their brave delight. All about us is full of joy, 
fuller than we notice. Take a handful of water 
from the rotting timbers of a wharf; little polyps are 
therein, medusae and the like, with few senses, few 
faculties ; but they all swim in a tide of joy, and it 
seems as if the world was made for them alone ; for 
them the tide ebbs and flows, for them the winter 
goes, the summer comes, and the universe subsists 
for them alone. 

Some men tell us that, at the other extreme of 
the scale, those vast bodies, the suns and satellites, 
have also a consciousness and a delight ; that " in 
reason's ear they all rejoice." But that is poetry. 
Not in reason's, but fancy's ear do they rejoice. 
The rest is fact, plain prose. 

All animate creatures in their natural condition 
have, it is true, then- woes ; but they are brief in 
time, little in quantity, and soon forgot. When you 
look microscopically and telescopically at the natu- 



SOURCE OF JOT. 



273 



ral suffering in the world of animals, you find it is 
just enough to tie the girdle, and hold the little crea- 
ture together, and keep him from violating his own 
individual being ; or else to unite the tribe and keep 
them from violating their social being. So it seems 
only the girdle of the individual of the flock, and no 
more an evil, when thus looked at, than the bruises 
we get in our essays to walk. Suffering marks the 
outer limit of the narrow margin of oscillation left 
for the caprice of the individual animal or man, — 
the pain a warning to mark the bound. 

A similar joy appears in young children well born 
and well nurtured. But the human power of error, 
though still not greater in proportion to our greater 
nature, is so much more, and man so little subordi- 
nate to his instincts, that we have wandered far 
from the true road of material happiness. So the 
new-born child comes trailing the errors of his 
ancestry behind him at his birth. Still, the healthy 
child, wisely cared for, though tethered with such a 
brittle chain of being, is no exception to the general 
rule of joy. He 

" Is a dew-drop which the morn brings forth, 
Not formed to undergo unkindly shocks, 
Or to be trailed along the soiling earth ; — 
A gem that glitters while it lives, 
And no forewarning gives, 
But at the touch of wrong, without a strife, 
Slips in a moment out of life." 



274 



CONSCIOUS EELIGION AS A 



In the world of adult men there is much less of 
this joy ; it is not a great river that with mighty 
stream runs round and round the world of human 
consciousness, all ignorant of ebb. Our faces are 
care-stricken, not many joyous ; most of them look 
as if they had met and felt the peltings of the storm, 
and only hoped for the rainbow. The songs of the 
people are mostly sad ; only the savage in tropic 
climes — subordinate to nature, there a gentle mis- 
tress — is blithe and gay as the monkeys and the 
parrots in his native grove of Africa ; and there his 
joy is only jollity, the joy of saucy flesh. 

There are two chief causes for this lack of joy 
with men. This is one : — 

I. "We have not yet fulfilled the necessary mate- 
rial conditions thereof. The individual has not kept 
the natural law, and hence has some schism in the 
flesh from his intemperance or want; some schism in 
the spirit from lack of harmony within ; or there is 
some schism between him and the world of matter, 
he not in unison with things around ; he has a mis- 
erable body, that goes stooping and feeble, must be 
waited for and waited on, and, like the rulers of the 
Gentiles, exercises authority over him ; or he lacks 
development of spiritual powers ; or else is poor, and 
needs material supplies. 

Or if the special individual is right in all these 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



275 



things, and so might have his personal joy, the mass 
of men in your neighborhood, your nation, or the 
world, are deficient in all these, in body, mind, 
and estate, and with your individual joy there comes 
a social grief, and so the worm in the bud robs your 
blossom of half its fragrant bloom, and hinders all 
its fruit. Man is social not less than personal ; 
sympathy is national, even human, reaching out to 
the ends of the earth ; and if the hungry cry of those 
who have reaped down the world's harvest smite 
your ear, why, your bread turns sour, and is bread 
of affliction. The rich scholar, with abundant time, 
in his well-stored library, has the less joy in his own 
books while he remembers there are nobler souls 
that starve for the crumbs which fall from his table, 
or drudge at some ungrateful toil not meant for 
them. The healthy doctor, well fed and nicely clad, 
cannot so steel his heart against the ignorance and 
want and pain he daily sees, that his health and 
table and science, and rosy girls, shall give him the 
same delight which would come thereof in a world 
free from such society of suffering. 

" The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." 

Now the pain which comes from this source, this 
lack of mind, body, and estate on the part of the 



276 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



special individual, or of the race, is all legitimate 
and merciful ; I would not have it less. There is 
never too much suffering of this sort in the world, 
only enough to teach mankind to live in harmony 
with Nature, in concord with each other, in unity 
with God. Here, as in the animals, this pain is but 
the girdle round the loins of you or me to keep 
the individual whole ; or about the waist of man- 
kind, to keep us all united in one brotherhood. 
Here, as there, suffering marks the limit of our mar- 
gin of oscillation, warns against trespass, and says, 
" Pause and forbear." 

Yet we are all seeking for this joy. Each man 
needs it ; knows he needs it, yet needs it deeper 
than he knows. So is it with mankind : the com- 
mon heart by which we live cries to God for satis- 
faction of our every need, and for our natural joy. 
The need thereof stirs the self-love of men to toil, 
the sight of pain quickens the nobler man to rouse 
his sluggish brother to end it all. The sad expe- 
rience of the world shows this, — that man must 
find his joy, not in subordinating himself to mat- 
ter, or to the instincts of the flesh, as the beasts find 
theirs, or of the weak to the strong, but in subordi- 
nating matter to mind, instinct to conscious reason, 
and then coordinating all men into one family of 
religious love. 

II. Here is the other cause. Much of this lack 



SOURCE OF JOY. 277 

of joy comes from false notions of religion, — false 
ideas of God, of man, and of the relation between 
the two. We are bid to think it wicked to be joy- 
ous. In the common opinion of churches, a relig- 
ious man must be a sad man, his tears become his 
meat. Men who in our day are eminent " leaders 
of the churches " are not joyous men ; their faces 
are grim and austere, not marked with manly de- 
light. Some men are sad at sight of the want, the 
pain, and the misdirection of men. It was unavoid- 
able that Jesus of Nazareth should ofttimes be 
u exceeding sorrowful." He must indeed weep over 
Jerusalem. The Apostles, hunted from city to city, 
might be excused for sadness. For centuries the 
Christian Church had reason to be a sad Church. 
Persecution made our New England fathers stern 
and sour men, and their form of religion caught a 
stain from their history. I see why this is so, and 
blame no man for it. It was once unavoidable. 

a 

But now it is a great mistake to renounce the nat- 
ural joy of life ; above all, to renounce it in the 
name of God. No doubt it takes the whole human 
race to represent in history the whole of Human 
Nature ; but if the " Church," that is theological 
men, make a mock at joy, then the " world " will go- 
to excess in the opposite extreme. Men in whom the 
religious and moral powers are not developed in pro- 
portion with the intellectual, the aesthetic, or the 

24 



278 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



physical appetites, will try to possess this joy, and 
without religion. But nothing is long fruitful of de- 
light when divorced from the consciousness of God ; 
nothing thrives that is at enmity with God. Such 
joy is poor, heartless, and unsatisfying. Men in 
churches set up a Magdalen, a nun, a monk, a her- 
mit, or a priest, as a representative of religion. Men 
out of churches want joy ; they will flee off where 
they can find it, and leave religion behind them. 
Yet joy without religion is but a poor, wandering 
Hagar, her little water spent, her bread all gone, and 
no angel to marshal the way to the well where she 
shall drink and feed her fainting child, and say, 
Thou, God, seest me ! 

There is little joy in the ecclesiastical conscious- 
ness of religion. Writers and preachers of Chris- 
tianity commonly dwell on the dark side of human 
nature. They tell us of our weakness, not of our 
ability to be and to do. They mourn and scold 
over human folly, human sin, human depravity, 
often leaving untold the noble deeds of man and 
his nobler powers. " Man is a worm," say they. 

They do the same with God. They paint him as 
a king, not as a father; and as a king who rules 
by low and selfish means, for low and selfish ends, 
from low and selfish motives, and with a most 
melancholy result of his ruling. According to the 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



279 



common opinion of the Christian churches, God's 
is the most unsuccessful despotism that has ever 
been set agoing, leading to the eternal ruin of the 
immense majority of his subjects, as the result of 
the absolute selfishness of the theological deity. In 
the theology called Christian the most conspicuous 
characteristics of God are great force, great self- 
esteem, and immense destructiveness. He is 
painted as cruel, revengeful, and without mercy, — 
the grimmest of the gods. The heathen devils all 
glower at us through the mask of the theological 
God. The Mexicans worshipped an idea of God, 
to which they sacrificed hundreds of captives and 
criminals. Christian divines tell us of a God that 
will not kill, but torment in hell the greater portion 
of his children, and will feed fat his " glory " with 
the damnation of mankind, the everlasting sacri- 
fice of each ruined soul! If men think that man 
is a worm, and God has lifted the heavenly heel 
to give him a squelch which shall last for ever, the 
relation between God and man is certainly not 
pleasant for us to think of. 

God is thought a hard creditor, man a poor 
debtor ; " religion " is the sum he is to pay ; so 
he puts that down grudgingly, and with the stin- 
giest fist. Or else God is painted as a grim and 
awful judge, man a poor, trembling culprit, shiver- 



280 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



ing before his own conscience, and slinking down 
for fear of the vengeance of the awful judge, hell 
gaping underneath his feet. Does any one doubt 
this ? Let him read the Book of Revelation, or the 
writings of John Calvin, of Baxter, or Edwards 
or even of Jeremy Taylor. The theological God is 
mainly a great devil, and as the theological devil 
hates " believers," whom he seeks to devour, so 
the theological God hates " unbelievers," and seeks 
successfully to devour them, gnawed upon eternally 
in hell. In general, theological books represent 
God as terrible. They make religion a melancholy 
sort of thing, unnatural to man, which he would 
escape from if he dared, or if he could. It is sel- 
dom spoken of as a thing good in itself, but valu- 
able to promote order on the earth, and help men 
to get " saved " and obtain a share of eternal happi- 
ness. It is not a joy, but a burthen, which some 
men are to be well and eternally paid for bearing 
in the heat of the mortal day. Yes, to the major- 
ity of men it is represented as of no use at all in 
their present or future condition ; for if a man has 
not Christianity enough to purchase a share in 
heaven, his religion is a useless load, — only a tor- 
ment on earth, and of no value at all in the next 
life ! What is the use of religion to men in eter- 
nal torment ? So, by the showing of the most 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



281 



respectable theologians, religion can bring no joy, 
save to the " elect," who are but a poor fraction of 
mankind, and commonly exhibit little of it here. 

The general tone of writings called religious is 
sad and melancholy. Religion adorns her brow 
with yellow leaves smitten by the frost, not with 
rosebuds and violets. The leading men in the 
more serious churches are earnest persons, self- 
denying, but grim, unlovely, and joyless men. 
Look through the ecclesiastial literature of the 
Christian world, — it is chiefly of this sad com- 
plexion. The branches of the theological tree are 
rough and thorny, not well laden with leaves, and 
of blossoms it has few that are attractive. It was 
natural enough that the Christians, when perse- 
cuted and trodden down, should weep and wail in 
their literature. In the first three centuries they 
do so ; — in every period of persecution. The dark 
shades of the New England forest lowered over 
New England theology, and Want and War knit 
their ugly brows in the meeting-houses of the day. 
But the same thing continued, and it lasts still. 
Now it is the habit of Christendom, though some- 
times it seems only a trick. 

In what is called Christian literature nothing 
surprises you more than the absence of joy. There 
is much of the terror of religion, little of its de- 
lights. Look over the list of sermons of South, 
24* 



282 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 



Edwards, Chalmers, Hopkins, Emmons, even of 
Jeremy Taylor, and you find few sermons on 
the joys of religion. The same is true of Mas- 
sillon, of Bourdaloue, and Bossuet. The popular 
ecclesiastical notion of religion is not to be repre- 
sented as a wife and mother, cheerful, contented, 
and happy in her work, but as a reluctant nun, 
abstracted, idle, tearful, and with a profound mel- 
ancholy; not the melancholy which comes from 
•seeing actual evils we know not how to cure, — 
the sadness of one strong to wish and will, but 
feeble to achieve; — no, the more incurable sad- 
ness which comes from a distrust of Nature and of 
God, and from the habit of worrying about the 
soul, — the melancholy of fear ; not the melancholy 
vwhich looks sadly on misery and crime, which 
wept out its " O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" but the 
sadness which whines in a corner, and chews its 
own lips from sheer distrust. 

The writers who dwell on the joys of religion 
too often have very inadequate ideas thereof. For 
they all, from Augustine to Chalmers, start with 
•the idea that God is imperfect, and not wholly to be 
trusted. Accordingly they seek and obtain but a 
very one-sided development of their nature, thinking 
they must sacrifice so much of it ; and hence have 
not that strength of religious character, nor that 
wholeness thereof, which is necessary to complete 
manly joy in religion. 



SOrRCE OF JOY. 



283 



Such being the ease, fear of God predominates 
over love of Him ; trust of God is only special under 
such and such circumstances, not universal under all 
circumstances ; and religious joy is thin, and poor, 
and cold. 

You find mention of religious joy in some of the 
great Christian writers, especially among the mys- 
tics, in Tauler and Kempis, Scougal, Fenelon, 
William Law, and Jacob Behme, not to mention 
others. Even Banyan has his delectable moun- 
tains, and though in the other world, the light there- 
from shines serene and joyous along the paths of 
mortal life. But in most, if not in all, of these wric- 
ers, religious joy is deemed an artificial privilege, 
reserved by God's decree for only a few, purchased 
by unnatural modes of life, and miraculously be- 
stowed. Even in greathearted Martin Luther, one 
of the most joyous of men, it is not a right which 
belongs to human nature, and comes naturally from 
the normal action of the faculties of man ; it is the 
result of " divine grace,' ? not of human nature. 
Thus this religious joy of the churches is often 
hampered and restricted, and the man must be 
belittled before he is capable thereof. In the ecclesi- 
astical saint there is always something sneaking ; 
some manly quality is left out, or driven out, some 
unmanly quality forced in. I believe this has been 
so in all ages of Christianity, and in all Christian 



284 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



sects at this day. Study the character and history of 
the saints of the Catholic and Protestant churches. 
Look at their mode of life, their sources and forms 
of joy. You see it is so. They must turn Human 
Nature out of doors before the Divine Nature can 
come in. So the heavenly bridegroom, adorned for 
his wife, comes to a house swept and garnished in- 
deed, but cheerless, empty, and cold, only theologi- 
cal furniture left in, the bride herself swept out. 
Look at the marbles of antiquity, — at the face of 
pagan Plato, of Aristotle, " the master of such as 
know," — or at the faces of modern philosophers, 
and compare them with the actual or ideal counte- 
nance of Christian saints, — with Saint Francis, 
with Saint Thomas, with Ignatius Loyola, with the 
ideal Magdalens and Madonnas of art, or with the 
dark, sad, and woe-stained faces of the leading 
clergy of the predominant sects, — and you see at 
once the absence of natural delight. 

Religion is often separated from common life. 
So a sharp distinction is made between the " flesh " 
and the " spirit." The flesh is all sinful, all that 
belongs to it thought poor, and mean, and low ; to 
taste the joys of piety, the senses must be fettered 
and put in jail, and then, where theology has made 
a solitude, it proclaims peace. On the one side is 
the " world," on the other " religion ; " and there is 
a great gulf fixed between the two, which neither 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



285 



Dives, nor Lazarus, nor yet Abraham, can pass 
over. Here all the delight is in " things temporal ; " 
there the delight is only in " things eternal." 
Worldly men have their delight in the things of 
this world, and no more ; heavenly men, only in the 
joys of the next life ; and they who have the worst 
time here shall have the best hereafter. Religion is 
thought out of place at a ball, at a theatre, at any 
amusement ; dancing is thought more than half a 
sin. Religion loves funerals, is seldom at a wedding, 
— only to sadden the scene, — for woman is bid to 
be ashamed of natural human love, and man of be- 
ing loved. " We are conceived in sin," quoth the- 
ology ; " the ' God-man ' was born with no human 
father." 

It seems commonly thought that the joys of relig- 
ion are inconsistent with active daily life. Men 
who have written thereof are chiefly ascetic and 
romantic persons of retired lives, of shy habits ; they 
prefer thought to work, passive contemplation to 
active meditation, and dreamy sentimentalism to all 
other and manlier joys. The natural result of this 
ecstasy, not the normal activity of the whole man, 
but irregular, extravagant, and insane action of a 
few noble powers. Hence those writings are not 
wholesome ; the air they exhale is close and un- 
healthy, for such" pietism is the sickness of the soul, 
not its soundness and its health. 



286 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



I believe what I say will apply to almost the 
whole class of writers on sentimental religion, — to 
the mystical writers of the Brahminic, Buddhistic, 
Christian, and Mahometan sects. He must be a 
whole man who writes a sound book on a theme so 
deep as the religious joys of man, — his delight in 
Nature, in man, and in God. But the false ideas 
of the popular theory corrupt the faculties of noble 
and great men. So, in the writings of Law and 
Fenelon, of Taylor and Henry More, you find this 
unhealthiness pervading what they do and say. 
There is much you sympathize in, but much also 
which offends a nice taste, and revolts the reason, 
the affections, and all the high faculties of a sound 
man. You may see the excess of this unhealthiness 
in the works of St. Bridget or of St. Theresa, in 
Molinos and Swedenborg, even in Taylor, in Fene- 
lon, and Augustine ; in the dreams and fancied reve- 
lations of monks and nuns, when nature clamored 
for her rights, or in the sermons and prayers of ascet- 
ic clergymen, whom a false idea of God and relig- 
ion has driven to depravity of body and sickness of 
the soul. 

We may see the effects of this false idea on the 
conduct and character of active men in a Methodist 
camp-meeting ; or in a form yet more painful, in the 
pinched faces, and narrow, unnatural foreheads of 



SOURCE OF JOT. 



287 



men and women early caught and imprisoned in 
some of the popular forms of fear of God. I have 
sometimes shuddered to hear such men talk of their 
joy of religion, — a joy unnatural and shameful, 
which delighted in the contemplation of torment as 
the portion of mankind. 

Read the life of St. Hugh, an Archbishop of Ly- 
ons. See in what his joys of religion consisted. If 
any one spoke of news in his presence, he checked 
them, saying, " This life is all given us for weeping 
and penance, not for idle discourses." It was his 
" constant prayer that God would extinguish in his 
heart all attachment to creatures, that His pure love 
might reign in all his affections." " His love of 
heavenly things made all temporal affairs seem 
burdensome and tedious." " Women he would 
never look in the face, so that he knew not the 
features of his own mother." He continually re- 
cited the Psalter and the Lord's Prayer ; the latter 
on one occasion " three hundred times in a single 
night ! " 

In saying all this, I do not wish to blame men. 
I would rather write an apology for the religious 
errors of Pagans or Christians, than a satire there- 
on. I only mention the fact. It is not a strange 
one, for we find analogous errors in the history of 
every department of human affairs. What dreams 
of astrologers and alchemists came before the cool, 



288 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



sober thought of chemists and astronomers ! The 
mistakes in religion are not greater in proportion to 
the strength of the religious faculty and the great- 
ness of the interest at stake, than the mistakes in 
agriculture or politics. The theology of Boston is 
not much worse than its " law and order " just now ; 
and they who in pulpits, administer the popular 
theology, are not much more mistaken than they 
who, in courts and jails, administer the public law. 
But in religion these mistaken notions have been so 
common, that the very name of religious joy is asso- 
ciated with superstition, bigotry, extravagance, mad- 
ness. You attend a meeting " for conference and 
prayer," and you come away a little disgusted, with 
more pity than sympathy for the earnest men who 
have so mistaken the nature of God, of man, and of 
the relation between the two ; who have so erred as 
to the beginning of religion, its processes and its 
result. You pass thence to a meeting of philo- 
sophical men met for science, or philanthropic men. 
met for benevolence, and what a change ! Both 
are equally earnest ; but in the one all is hot, un- 
natural, restricted, and presided over by fear ; in 
the other all is cool, all is free, and there is no fear. 

In consequence of this abuse, men often slight 
the sentiment of religion, and deny the real and 
sober joy which it naturally affords. This is a great 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



289 



loss, for, setting aside the extravagance, the claim 
to miraculous communion with God, putting aside 
all ecstasy, as only the insanity of religious action, 
it is true that, in its widest sense and in its high- 
est form, religion is a source of the deepest and 
noblest joys of man. Let us put away the child- 
ish things and look at the real joys of manly relig- 
ion itself. 

A true form of religion does not interfere with 
any natural delight of man. True religion is nor- 
mal life, not of one faculty alone, but of all in due 
coordination. The human consciousness of the In- 
finite God will show itself, not merely in belief, or 
prayer and thanksgiving, but by the legitimate ac- 
tion of every limb of the body and every faculty of 
the spirit. Then all the legitimate appetites have 
their place. Do you want the natural gratification 
of the body ? Religion bids you seek it in the nat- 
ural and legitimate way, not in a manner unnatural 
and against the body's law. It counts the body 
sacred, as well as the soul, and knows that a holy 
spirit demands a holy flesh. Thus it enhances even 
the delights of the body, by keeping every sense in 
its place. The actual commandments of God writ- 
ten on every fibre of human flesh, are not less au- 
thoritative than the Ten which Jehovah is said to 
have written on stone at Sinai. 

25 



290 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



Do you seek the active business of life ? This 
religion will bid you pursue your calling, hand-craft 
or head-craft, and buy and sell and get gain, the 
Golden Rule your standard measure, and all your 
daily work a sacrament whereby you communicate 
with man and God. Do you want riches, honor, 
fame, the applause of men ? This religion tells you 
to subordinate the low aim to the high ; to keep 
self-love in its natural channel ; to preserve the 
integrity of your own spirit ; and then, if you will 
and can, to get riches, power, honor, fame, and the 
applause of men, by honestly earning them all, so 
that you shall be the manlier, and mankind the 
richer, for all that you do and enjoy. Then the ap- 
probation of your own soul and the sense of con- 
cord with men and of unity with God, will add 
a certain wholeness to your delight in the work of 
your hands. 

Do you desire the joys of the intellect working 
in any or all its manifold forms of action? The 
world is all before you where to choose, and Prov- 
idence your guide. The law of God says, " Of 
every tree of the field shalt thou eat. Nothing that 
is natural shall harm thee. Put forth thy hand 
and try. Be not afraid that Truth or Search shall 
ever offend God, or harm the soul of man." Does 
a new truth threaten an old church ? It will build 
up ten new ones in its stead. No man ever loved 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



291 



truth too much, or had too much of it, or was too 
diligent in the search therefor. To use the reason 
for reasonable things is a part of religion itself. 
Thus consciousness of God well developed in man 
gives greater joy to the natural delights of the in- 
tellect itself, which it helps to tranquillize and render 
strong. 

You need the exercise of the moral faculties. 
This religion will bid you trust your own con- 
science, never to fear to ask thereof for the ever- 
lasting right, and be faithful thereto. Justice will 
not hurt you, nor offend God; and if your justice 
pull down the old kingdom, with its statutes of 
selfishness and laws of sin and death, it will build 
up a new and better state in its stead, the Com- 
monwealth of Righteousness, where the eternal 
laws of God are reenacted into the codes of men, 
laws of love and life. No man ever loved justice 
too much, — his own rights, or the rights of men, 
— or was too faithful to his own conscience. Loy- 
alty to that is fealty to God ; and the conscious- 
ness of Him enhances the moral delight of moral 
men, as the intellectual joy of scientific and thought- 
ful men. 

Do you seek the joy of the affections which 
cling to finite objects of attraction, to wife and 



292 



COXSCIOrS KELIGION AS A 



child, brother and sister, parent and friend? Re- 
ligion will tell you it is impossible to love these 
too much ; that it is impossible to be too affection- 
ate, or to be too wise or too just. No man can be 
too faithful to his own heart, nor have, in general, 
too much love. Love of the "creature" is part of 
the service we owe the Creator ; one of the forms of 
love to God. Conscious piety will enhance the de- 
light of mortal affections, and will greaten and beau- 
tify every form of love, — connubial, parental, and 
filial, friendly and philanthropic love. 

Nay, all these — the love of truth and beauty, 
of justice and right, of men — are but parts of the 
great integral piety, the love of God, the Author 
of Truth, of Justice, and of Love. The normal 
delight in God's world, the animal joy in material 
things, the intellectual in truth and beauty, the 
moral in justice and right, the affectional delight 
in the persons of men, the satisfactions of labor of 
hand or head or heart, — all these are a part of 
our large delight in God, for religion is not one 
thing and life another, but the two are one. The 
normal and conscious worship of the Infinite God 
will enlarge every faculty, enhancing its quantity 
and quality of delight. 

Let me dwell yet longer on this affectional de- 
light. Last Sunday I spoke of the Increase of 
Power which comes of the religious use of the fac- 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



293 



ulties. One form thereof I purposely passed by 
and left for this hour, — the ability to love other 
men. Religion, by producing harmony with your- 
self, concord with men, and unity with God, pre- 
vents the excess of self-love, enlarges the power, of 
unselfish affection, increases the quantity of love, 
and so the man has a greater delight in the welfare 
of other men. 

I will not say that this religion increases the 
powers of instinctive affection, except indirectly 
and in general, as it enlarges the man's whole 
quantity of being, and refines its quality. Yet 
much of the power of affection is not instinctive, 
but the result of conscious and voluntary action. 
It is not mere instinct which drives me uncon- 
sciously and bound to love a friend ; I do it con- 
sciously, freely, because it suits the whole of me, 
not merely one impulsive part. The conscious- 
ness of my connection with God, of my obligation 
to God, of his Providence watching over all, — 
this, and the effort to keep every law He has written 
in my constitution, enlarges my capability to love 
men. 

I pass by connubial love, wherein affection and 
passion blend each its several bloom, and there are 
still two other forms of conscious love. One is 
friendship, the other philanthropy. 

In friendship I love a man for his good and 
25* 



294 CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 

mine too. There is action on both sides ; I take 
delight in him, but only on condition that he takes 
delight in me. I ask much of my friend, not only 
gratitude and justice, but forbearance and patience 
towards me ; — yes, sacrifice of himself. I do this 
not selfishly, not wilfully. I love my friend for 
his character and his conduct, for what he is to 
me and I am to him. My friendship is limited, 
and does not reach out so far as justice, which has 
the range of the world. Who can claim friend- 
ship of any one? The New England kidnapper 
has a right to the philanthropy even of his victim ; 
but he seems to have a right to the friendship 
only of pirates and men that would assassinate 
the liberty of mankind. But no man is wholly 
wicked and self-abandoned, and so has forfeited all 
claim to the friendship of the noblest; and such is 
the blessed wealth of the human heart, that it con- 
tinually runs over with mercy for the merciless, and 
love for the unlovely. 

In philanthropy I love a man for his sake, not at 
all for mine. I take the delight of justice and of 
charity in him, but do not ask him to take any de- 
light in me. I ask nothing of him, not even grati- 
tude, nor justice; perhaps expect neither. I love 
him because, he is a man, and without regard to his 
character and conduct ; and would feed and clothe 
and warm and bless the murderer, or even the Bos- 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



295 



ton kidnapper. Philanthropy makes its sun rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sends its rain on the 
just and on the unjust. Its circle is measured by its 
power, not its will. It is not personal, limited in its 
application to Robert or Marion, but universal as 
justice, reaching to all, it joins the wayfaring Samar- 
itan to his national enemy who had fallen among 
thieves. 

Now I wish to say that religion enlarges a man's 
power of friendship and of philanthropy, and conse- 
quently enhances the delight of both. Look a mo- 
ment at the joy of each. 

The joy of friendship is a deep and beautiful de- 
light. Here you receive as well as give, get not 
only from yourself, as your unconsciousness be- 
comes conscious, and the seed you planted for the 
bread of another becomes a perfect flower for your 
own eye and bosom ; but you receive from another 
self. This is one of the dearest joys ; it is the mu- 
tuality of affection, your delight in another's person, 
and his delight in you ; it is a reciprocity of per- 
sons. There are those we love not with instinctive 
passion, as man and wife ; nor with instinctive affec- 
tion, as parent and child ; nor with the love of phi- 
lanthropy ; but with emotions of another class, with 
friendly love. It is delightful to do kind deeds for 
such, and receive kind deeds from them. Not that 
you need or they need the gift ; but both the giv- 



296 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



ing. You need to give to them, they to give to 
you. Their very presence is a still and silent joy. 
After long intimacy of this sort, you scarce need 
speech to communicate sympathy ; the fellow-feel- 
ing has a language and tells its own tale. In lov- 
ing a friend, I have all the joy of self-love without 
its limitation. I find my life extending into another 
being, his into me. So I multiply my existence. If 
I love one man in this way, and he love me, I have 
doubled my delight ; if I love two, it is yet further 
enlarged. So I live in each friend I add to myself ; 
his joys are mine and mine are his ; there is a soli- 
darity of affection between us, and his material de- 
lights give permanent happiness to me. As a man 
enlarges his industrial power by material instru- 
ments, the wind and the river joined to him by skil- 
ful thought, so he enlarges his means of happiness 
by each friend his affection joins to him. A man 
with a forty-friend power would be a millionaire at 
the treasury of love. 

The joy of philanthropy is a high delight, worth 
all the exaltations of St. Hugh, and the ecstasies of 
St. Bridget and St. Theresa. Compare it with the 
rapture which Jonathan Edwards anticipates for the 
" elect " in heaven, looking down upon the damned, 
and seeing their misery, and making " heaven ring 
with the praises of God's justice towards the wicked, 
and his grace towards the saints ! " Such is the 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



297 



odds betwixt the religion of nature and the theology 
of the Christian Church. 

There is a great satisfaction in doing good to 
others, — to men that you never saw, nor will see, 
— who will never hear of you, but not the less be 
blessed by your bounty, — even in doing good to 
the unthankful and the unmerciful. You have 
helped a poor woman in Boston out of the want 
and wretchedness her drunken husband has brought 
on her, and filled her house withal ; you have deliv- 
ered a slave out of the claw of the kidnapper, the 
" barbarous and heathen kidnapper in Benguela," or 
the " Christian and honorable kidnapper in Boston," 
commissioned, and paid for the function ; you have 
taken some child out of the peril of the streets, 
found him a home, and helped him grow up to be 
a self-respectful and useful man ; — - suppose the 
poor woman shall never know the name of her 
benefactor, nor the slave of his deliverer, nor the 
child of his saviour, — that you get no gratitude 
from the persons, no justice from the public ; you 
are thought a fool for your charity, and a culprit for 
your justice, the government seeking to hang you ; 
still the philanthropy has filled your bosom with 
violets and lilies, and you run over with the de- 
light thereof. You would be ashamed to receive 
gratitude, or ask justice. " Father, forgive them ! " 
was the appropriate benediction of one of the great 



298 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



masters of philanthropy. Do you look for reciprocal 
affection ? 

" I have heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
With coldness still returning ; 
Alas ! the gratitude of men 
Hath oftener left me mourning." 

The good Samaritan, leaving his " neighbor " who 
had fallen among thieves well cared for at the inn, 
jogs home on his mule with a heart that kings 
might envy ; but when he comes again, if the man, 
healed by his nursing, offers thanks, — " Nay," says 
the Samaritan, " nay, now, be still and say nothing 
about it. It is all nothing; only human nature. I 
could not help it. You would do the same ! " 
Such a man feeds his affection by such deeds of 
love, till he has the heart of God in his bosom, and 
a whole paradise of delight. Meantime the Priest 
and the Levite have hastened to the temple, and 
offered their sacrifice, tithed their mint, their anise, 
and their cumin, made broad their phylacteries and 
enlarged the borders of their garments, and dropped 
with brassy ring their shekels in the temple chest, 
shoving aside the poor widow with her two mites, 
which make a farthing ; now they stand before the 
seven golden candlesticks and pray, " Father, I 
thank Thee that I am not like other men, who trust 
in good works and the light of nature ; I give tithes 
of all that I possess. I thank Thee that I am one 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



299 



of Thine Elect, and shall have glory when this 
Samaritan goeth down to the pit." 

I once knew a little boy in the country, whose 
father gave him a half-dime to help the sufferers 
at a fire in New Brunswick ; the young lad dropped 
his mite into the box at church, — it was his earli- 
est, alms, — with a deep delight which sweetened 
his consciousness for weeks to come with the 
thought of the good that his five cents would do. 
What were all sweetmeats and dainties to this ? 
Our little boy's mother had told him that the good 
God loved actions such as these, Himself dropping 
the sun and moon into the alms-box of the world ; 
and the grave, sober father, who had earned the 
silver with serious sweat, his broadaxe ringing in 
the tough oak of New England, brushed a tear 
out of his eye at seeing the son's delight in helping 
men whom none of the family had ever seen. 

Philanthropy begins small, and helps itself along, 
sometimes by love of sheep and oxen, and dogs 
and swine. Did not the great Jesus ride into the 
holy city " on the foal of an ass " ? By and by 
our philanthropist goes out to widest circles, makes 
great sacrifice of comfort, of money, of reputation ; 
his philanthropic power continually grows, and an 
inundation of delight fills up his mighty soul. 
The shillings which a poor girl pays for mission- 
aries to Burmah and Guinea are shillings which 



300 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



bring more delight than all the gewgaws they could 
buy. 

I have seen a man buy baskets of cherries in a 
foreign town, and throw them by handfuls to the 
little boys and girls in the streets wholly unknown 
to him. He doubtless got more joy from that, 
than if he had had the appetite of a miser, and 
stomach enough to eat up all the cherries in the 
valley of the Rhine. Men of wealth, who use 
money for philanthropy, to feed the poor, to build 
hospitals and asylums, schools and colleges, get 
more joy from this use thereof, than if they had 
the pecuniary swallow and stomach of a gigantic 
miser, and themselves eat up the schools and col- 
leges, the hospitals and asylums, which others built. 
They who build widows' houses, not they who 
devour them, have the most joy thereof. 

The man who devotes the larger wealth of the 
mind, reason, understanding, imagination, with all 
the treasures of culture and the graceful dignity 
of eloquence, to serve some noble cause, despised 
as yet, and sacrifices not money alone, but reputa- 
tion, and takes shame as outward recompense for 
truth and justice and love, — think you that he has 
less delight than the worldly man well gifted, cul- 
tivated well, whose mind lies a prostitute to the 
opinion of the mob, and is tricked off with the 
ornaments of shame, and in office shines " the first 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



301 



of bartered jades"? Look about you in Boston,, 
and answer, ye that know! Go to the men who 
sacrifice their intellect, their conscience, their affec- 
tions, for place and a name, ask them what they 
have got in exchange for their soul? and then go- 
to such as have left all for God and his law, and. 
ask them of their reward. 

Now religion enlarges this capacity for both 
friendship and philanthropy, and so the quantity of 
joy which comes thereof, the happiness of the affec- 
tions. 

This religion has delights peculiar to the relig- 
ious faculty, the happiness of the Soul. I love 
the Infinite God as the ideal of all perfection, — 
beauty to the imagination, truth to the reason, 
justice to the conscience, the perfect person to the 
affections, the Infinite and Self-faithful God to the 
soul. With this there vanishes away all fear of 
God, all fear of ultimate evil for any thing that is. 
If this escape from fear of God were all, that alone 
were a great thing. How men hate fear! From 
the dreadful God of the popular theology, and its 
odious immortality, they flee to annihilation ; and 
atheism itself seems a relief. But this religion 
which grows out of the idea of the Infinite God 
casts out all fear and the torment thereof. I am 

26 



302 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



content to be afraid of some men, stronger and 
wickeder than I ; I know they can hurt me ; I 
know they wish it ; I know they will. To them 
my truth is " error of the carnal reason ; " my justice 
is "violation of the law" of men ; my love, philan- 
thropic or friendly, is "levying war"; my religion 
is " infidelity," — " sin against the Holy Ghost." 
I fear these men ; they turn their swine into my 
garden to root up and tread down every little herb 
of grace, or plant that flowers for present or for 
future joy. These men may hang me, or assassi- 
nate me in the street. I will try to keep out of 
their wicked way. If they will hurt me, I must 
bear it as best I can. But the fear of such men 
will not disturb me much. Their power is only for 
a time. " Thus far, but no further," quoth Death to 
the tyrant ; and I am free. 

But to fear God whom I cannot escape, whom 
death cannot defend me from, that would indeed be 
most dreadful. Irreligion is the fear of God. It 
takes two forms. In atheism, the form of denial, 
you fear without naming the object of horror, per- 
haps calling it Chance or Fate ; in superstition, the 
form of affirmation, you fear Him by name, believe 
and tremble. Superstition and atheism are fellow- 
trunks from the same root of bitterness. I would 
as soon worship in the wigwam of Odin and Thor, 



SOURCE OF JOY. 303 

as in the temple of Fear called by a Hebrew or a 
Christian name. 

With a knowledge of the Infinite God, and with 
a fair development of the religious faculties, you 
cease to fear, you love. As nocturnal darkness, or 
the gray mist of morn, is chased away before the 
rising sun, so dread and horror flee off before the 
footsteps of love. Instead of fear, a sense of com- 
plete and absolute trust in God comes in, gives you 
repose and peace, filling you with tranquillity and 
dear delight in God. Then I know not what a day 
shall bring forth ; some knave may strip me of my 
house and home, an accident — my own or another's 
fault — deprive me of the respect of men, and death 
leave me destitute of every finite friend, the objects 
of instinctive or of voluntary love all scattered from 
before my eyes ; some hireling of the government, for 
ten pieces of silver, may send me off a slave for all 
my mortal life ; decay of sense may perplex me, 
wisdom shut out an eye and ear ; and disease may 
rack my frame. Still I am not afraid. I know 
what eternity will be. I appeal from man to God. 
Forsaken, I am not alone, uncomforted, not com- 
fortless. I fold my arms and smile at the ruin 
which time has made, the peace of God all radiant 
in my soul. 

Let me look full in the face the evil which I meet 
in the personal tragedies of private life, in the social 



304 



CONSCIOUS KELIGION AS A 



evils which darkly variegate this and all other great 
towns ; let me see monstrous political sin, dooming 
one man to a throne because he has trod thousands 
down to wretchedness and dirt; nay, let me see 
such things as happen now in Boston. I know no 
sadder sight on all this globe of lands : for to-day a 
brother-man is held in a dungeon by the avarice of 
this city, which seeks to make him a slave, and he 
out of his jail sends round a petition to the clergy- 
men of Boston, asking their prayers for his unalien- 
able rights, — a prayer which they will refuse, for 
those " churches of Christ " are this day a " den of 
thieves," shambles for the sale of human flesh.* 
Let me look on all these things, still I am not dis- 
mayed. I know, I feel, I am sure of this, that the 
Infinite God has known it all, provided for it all ; 
that as He is all-powerful, all-wise, all-just, all-loving, 
and all-holy too, no absolute evil shall ever come to 
any child of his, erring or sinned against. I will do 
all for the right : then, if I fail, the result abides 
with God ; it is His to care for and not mine. Thus 
am I powerful to bear, as powerful to do. I know 
of no calamity, irresistible, sudden, seemingly total, 
but religion can abundantly defend the head and 
heart against its harm. So I can be calm. De- 



* The prophecy was only too true, but here and there remem- 
bered his God. 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



305 



feated, and unable to rise, I will " lie low in the 
hand of the Father," smiling with the ' delight of 
most triumphant trust. 

" These surface troubles come and go 
Like rufflings of the sea ; 
The deeper depth is out of reach 
To all, my God, but Thee." 

With this tranquillity of trust there comes a still, 
a peculiar and silent joy in God. You feel your 
delight in Him, and His in you. The man is not 
beside himself, he is self-possessed and cool. There 
is no ecstasy, no fancied " being swallowed up in 
God ; " but there is a lasting inward sweetness and 
abiding joy. It will not come out in raptures ; it 
will not pray all night, making much ado for noth- 
ing done ; but it will fill the whole man with beati- 
tudes, with delight in the Infinite God. There will 
be a calm and habitual peace, a light around the 
mortal brow, but a light which passes from glory to 
glory till it changes into perfect fulness of delicious 
joy. God gives to the loving in their sorrow or 
their sleep. 

Let us undervalue no partial satisfaction, which 
may be had Without the consciousness of God. If 
it be legitimate and natural to man, let it have its 
place and its joy. Religion is not every thing. But 
yet the happiness of this inner human world; the 
26* 



306 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



.delight of loving God and absolutely trusting Him, 
as plainly the dearest of all delights. I love the 
world of sense, its beauty to the eye and ear : the 
natural luxury of taste and touch. It is indeed a 
glorious world, — the stars of earth, that gem the 
ground with dewy loveliness, the flowers of heaven, 
whose amaranthine bloom attracts alike the admir- 
ing gaze of clown or sage, and draws the lover's eye 
while the same spirit is blooming also in his and 
in another's heart. I love the world of science, — 
the deeper loveliness which the mind beholds in 
each eternal star, or the rathe violet of this April 
day. What a more wondrous wonder is the uni- 
form force of Nature, whose constant modes of oper- 
ation are all exact as mathematic law, and whence 
the great minds of Kepler, Newton, and Laplace 
gather the flowers of nature's art, and bind them up 
in handfuls for our lesser wits ! I rejoice in the 
world of men, in the all-conquering toil which sub- 
ordinates matter unto man, making the river, ocean, 
winds, to serve mankind ; which bridles the light- 
aiing and rides it through the sky, and sails the 
stormiest seas unharmed. I rejoice in the statutes 
which reenact the eternal laws of God, and admin- 
ister justice betwixt man and man. I delight in 
human love in all its forms, instinctive or voluntary, 
iin friendship and philanthropy ; the mutuality of 
persons is a dear and sacred joy to me. But the 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



307 



delight in God is yet more, — dearer than each of 
these ; one we like not much to name. Add to it 
all these several delights, which get each a charm 
from this consciousness of God, and you taste and 
see the real happiness of religion. 

Religion without joy, — it is no religion. Super- 
stition, the fear of God, might well be sad. The 
devotees thereof seek their delight in violating 
the functions of the body and the spirit. In the 
theological garden the Tree of Life bears fruit 
indeed, a few fair apples, but out of reach, which 
no man can gather till death lift us on his shoulders, 
and then they are not apples for a mortal mouth. 
You turn off from the literature of this superstition, 
and look on sunny Nature, on the minnow in the 
sea, on the robin in the field, on the frog, the snake, 
the spider, and the toad, and smile at sight of their 
gladness in the world, and wish to share it yourself. 
You turn to the literature which makes a mock at 
all religion. You find enough of it in Greece and 
Rome at the decay of paganism, enough still in 
brilliant France at the dissolution of Christian my- 
thology, in the last century and in this. There also 
is an attempt at joy, but the attempt is vain, and 
the little life of men is full of wine and uproar and 
scarlet women, is poor, unsatisfactory, and short, 
rounded with bitterness at the last. The chief 
tree in that garden blossoms bright enough, but it 



308 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



bears only apples of Sodom for a body without a 
soul, a here with no hereafter, in a world without 
a God. In such a place the brilliance of genius is 
only lightning, not light. In such company you 
almost long for the iron age of theology and the 
hard literature of the " divines," lean and old and 
sour, but yet teaching us of a Will above the poor 
caprice of men, of a Mind beyond this perishing 
intellect, of an Arm which made men tremble in- 
deed, but also upheld the world. At least there 
is Duty in that grim creation, and self-denial for the 
sake of God. 

Things should not be so. Sensuality is not 
adequate delight for men who look to immortal- 
ity. Religion is not at enmity with joy. No: it 
is irreligion, — atheistic now and now supersti- 
tious. There is no tyranny in God. Man is not 
a worm, the world a vale of tears. Tears enough 
there are, and long will be, — the morning mist of 
the human day. We can wipe off some of them, can 
rend a little the cloud of ignorance and want and 
crime, and let in the gladdening light of life. Nay, 
grief and sorrow are the world's medicine, salutary 
as such, and not excessive for the ill they come to 
cure. But if we are to make them our daily food, 
and call that angels' bread, surely it is a mistake 
which the world of matter cries out upon, and 
human nature itself forbids. 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



309 



The development of religion in man is the con- 
dition of the highest happiness. Temperance, the 
piety of the body, prepares that for the corporeal 
joys, the humble in their place, the highest also in 
their own ; wisdom, the piety of mind, justice, 
the piety of conscience, and love, the piety of the 
affections, — the love of God with all our varied 
faculties, — these furnish us the complete spiritual 
joy which is the birthright of each man. It is the 
function of religion to minister this happiness, which 
comes of self-denial for the sake of God. 

The joy of religion must be proportionate to the 
purity of the feeling, the completeness of the idea, 
and the perfection of the act. When all are as 
they should be, what a joy is there for man ! No 
disappointment will have lasting power over you, 
no sorrow destroy your peace of soul. Even the 
remembrance of sins past by will be assuaged by 
the experience you thereby have, and by the new 
life which has grown over them. The sorrows of 
the world will not seem as death-pangs, but the 
birth-pains of new and holier life. The sins of 
mankind, the dreadful wars, the tyrannies of the 
strong over the weak, or of the many over the 
few, will be seen to be only the stumbling of this 
last child of God learning to walk, to use his limbs 
and possess himself of the world which waits to be 
mastered by man's wisdom, ruled by man's justice, 



310 



CONSCIOUS RELIGION AS A 



directed by man's love, as part of the great human 
worship of the Infinite God. The Past, the Pres- 
ent, and the Future will appear working together 
for you and all mankind, — all made from the 
perfect motive of God, for a perfect end and as a 
perfect means. You will know that the provi- 
dence of the Great Author of us all is so complete 
and universal, that every wrong that man has suf- 
fered which he could not escape, every sorrow he 
has borne that could not be resisted nor passed by, 
every duty we have done, had a purpose to serve 
in the infinite housekeeping of the universe, and 
is warrant for so much eternal blessedness in the 
world to come. You look on the base and wicked 
men who seem as worms in the mire of civilization, 
often delighting to bite and devour one another, and 
you remark that these also are children of God ; 
that He loves each of them, and will suffer no 
ancient Judas, nor modern kidnapper of men, to 
perish ; that there is no child of perdition in all the 
family of God, but He will lead home his sinner 
and his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy 
of their wickedness, " the murrain of beasts," bowed 
down and not able to lift themselves up, He will 
carry in his arms ! 

The joys of the flesh are finite, and soon run 
through. Objects of passion are the dolls wherewith 
we learn to use our higher faculties, and through all 



SOURCE OF JOY. 



311 



our life the joy of religion, the delight in God, be- 
comes more and more. All that ancient saints ever 
had thereof, the peace which the world could not 
give, the rest unto the soul, which Jesus spoke of, — 
all these are for you and me, here and now and 
to-day, if we will. Our own souls hunger for it, 
God offers it to us all. " Come and take," says the 
Father of the world. 

" While Thou, O my God, art my Help and Defender, 

~No cares can o'erwhelm me, no terrors appall ; 
The wiles and the snares of this world will but render 

More lively my hope in my God and my All. 
And when Thou demandest the life Thou hast given, 

With joy will I answer Thy merciful call ; 
And quit Thee on earth, but to find Thee in heaven, 

My Portion for ever, my God, and my All." 



IX. 



OF CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. — Matt. ix. 13. 

Nothing in human experience is so lovely as the 
consciousness of God ; nothing so tranquillizing, ele- 
vating, beautifying. See it on a merely personal 
scale in a man, imagine it on a national scale in a 
great people, — the natural development of religion 
into its various forms is one of the most beautiful 
phenomena of the world. But, alas ! men too often 
love to meddle a little with nature ; not simply to 
develop, complete, and perfect what begun sponta- 
neously, but to alter after individual caprice, so that 
the universal, eternal, and unchangeable force is 
made to take the form of their personal, temporary, 
and shifting caprice. 

Thus in old gardens you may see pines, yew-trees, 
and oaks clipped into fantastic and unnatural forms, 
looking like any thing but trees, not works of nature, 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 313 

but tricks of skill. A fan, a pyramid, or a peacock 
is taken for the model of a tree, and the poor oak or 
yew is teased into some approach to that alien type. 
But the tree is always stinted, ugly, and short-lived 
under such treatment. Pliant nature assumes the 
form thrust on her, and then dies. So the savage, 
who has not yet learned to clothe his body, colors it 
with gall-nuts or ochre, tattooes his fancy upon his 
skin, mutilates the members, and hangs " barbaric 
pearl and gold " where nature left no need nor room 
for ornament. Civilized nations cut off the manly 
beard, and scrimp and screw the female form, warp- 
ing, twisting, distorting, and wasting the dear handi- 
work of God. So we see men, as those trees, walk- 
ing in a vain show far astray from the guidance of 
nature, looking as if " nature's journeymen had 
made them, and not made them well, they imitate 
humanity so abominably.' , 

But man is not content to meddle with his body. 
He must try his hand on the soul, warping and 
twisting, tattooing and mutilating that also, coloring 
it with ochre and gall-nuts of more astringent bite, 
and hanging barbaric pendants thereon. Attempts 
are made to interfere with the religious faculty, and 
give it a conventional direction ; to make it take on 
certain forms of human caprice, not human nature. 
Some monstrous fancy is adopted for the model 



314 COXYEXTTOXAL AXD NATURAL SACRAATEXTS. 



man, and then common men are clipped, and pruned, 
and headed down, or bent in, and twisted into a 
resemblance to that type. Nay, men are thought 
to be religious, just as they conform to the unnat- 
ural abomination. " God likes none but the clipped 
spirit/' quoth the priest. " No natural man for Him. 
Away with your whole men. Mutilation is the test 
of piety ! " 

If some Apelles or Michael Angelo could paint 
the religious condition of mankind, and represent by 
form and color to the eye all this mutilation, twist- 
ing, distorting, and tattooing of the invisible spirit, 
what a sight it would be, — these dwarfs and crip- 
ples, one-legged, one-eyed, one-handed, and half- 
headed, half-hearted men! what a harlequin-show 
there would be! what motley on men's shoulders! 
what caps and bells on reverend heads, and tattooing 
which would leave Australia far behind! What 
strange jewels are the fashionable theological opin- 
ions of Christendom ! Surely such liveries were 
never invented before ! In that picture men would 
look as striped as the Pope's guard. And if some 
Adamitie men and women were also represented, 
walking about in this varicolored paradise of theol- 
ogy, arrayed in the natural costume of religion, 
" when unadorned, adorned the most," how different 
they would seem ! Truly that gibbeting of theologi- 
cal folly in a picture would be a more instructive 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 315 



" Last Judgment " than even the great Michael ever 
thought of painting. 

In all forms of religion hitherto there has been 
noticed, not merely the natural difference between 
right and wrong, good and evil, but also an artificial 
and conventional difference between things sacred 
and things profane. Some things are deemed com- 
mon and laical ; others are called holy and clerical. 
This conventional distinction begins early, extends 
wide, and will outlast you and me a great many 
years. Thus, what is now-a-days said under oath 
is officially thought a holy and clerical sort of truth ; 
while what is said without oath, though equally 
correspondent with facts, is officially considered only 
a common and laical sort of truth. Some persons, 
as atheists and such as deny the immortality of 
the soul, are thought incapable of this clerical truth, 
and so not allowed to swear, or otherwise testify, in 
court. 

In earlier ages of the world, and even now, this 
conventional distinction between laical and clerical, 
sacred and profane, applies to places, as groves, hill- 
tops, temples, and the like ; to times, as new moons 
with one, full moons with another, Friday with the 
Turks, Saturday with the Jews, Sunday with the 
Christians ; to things, as statues of saints and dei- 
ties, the tools of public worship; to persons, and 



316 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



some are set apart from mankind as " the Lord's 
lot," and deemed holy ; to actions, some of which 
are reckoned pleasing to God, not because they are 
naturally right, good, beautiful, or useful, but only 
as conventionally sacred ; and to opinions, which for 
the same reason were pronounced revealed, and so 
holy and clerical. 

The laws of the land, for a long time, observed 
this artificial distinction. Thus a blow struck in a 
church or temple brought a severer punishment on 
the offender than if given elsewhere. Even now 
in Boston it is lawful to " gamble," except on Satur- 
day night and Sunday ; and all common work on 
that day is penal. Formerly it was legally thought 
worse to steal church property than any other. To 
rob a beggar was a small thing,; it was a great sin 
to steal from a meeting-house. To take a whole 
loaf from a baker's basket was a trifle, but to steal 
the consecrated wafer from the church-box brought 
the offender to the stake. Says Charlemagne, 
" Less mercy is to be shown to men who rob and 
steal from the church, than to common thieves." In 
New England, until lately, for striking a clergyman 
a man was punished twice as much as for striking a 
layman ; not because a bishop is to be blameless, 
" no striker," and so less likely, and less able, to 
retaliate, but because he is a holy person. Not long 
ago there was no penalty in this State for disturbing 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 317 

a moral meeting, but a severe one for disturbing a 
religious meeting. Opinions connected with relig- 
ion have had laws to defend them. It was once a 
capital crime to deny the Trinity, or the inspiration 
of the Song of Solomon, while a man might deny 
all the axioms of Euclid, all the conclusions of sci- 
ence, and the law let him alone. It seems that 
these artificial and foreign " sacred things " cannot 
take care of themselves so well as the indigenous 
"things of this world." Religion was thought to 
extend to certain places, times, things, persons, ac- 
tions, and opinions, and the law gave them a pecu- 
liar protection ; but religion was not thought to 
extend much further. So the law stopped there. 
About three hundred years ago, an Italian sculptor 
was burned alive, in Spain, for breaking a statue 
he had himself made, being angry because the cus- 
tomer would not pay the price for it. The statue 
was a graven image of the Virgin Mary. Had it 
been the image of his own mother, he might have 
ground it to powder if he liked, or he might have 
beat his own living wife, and had no fault found 
with him. 

There was a deeper reason for this capricious dis- 
tinction than we sometimes think. Religion ought 
to be the ruler in all the affairs of men ; but before 
we come to the absolute religion, which will one 
day do this, men begin with certain particular 
27* 



318 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

things which they claim as divine. Religion is to 
have eminent domain over them, while over other 
things it has a joint jurisdiction with " the world." 
It was well that their idea of religion went as far as 
it did. In the Middle Ages, if a fugitive slave fled 
to the Catholic Church and got to the altar, his mas- 
ters had no legal right to touch him but by permis- 
sion of the priest. The bishop interfered, made 
terms with the masters, and then delivered him up 
or not as they promised well or ill. The spirit of 
religion was supposed to rule in the church, and to 
protect the outcast. Men counselled wiser than 
they knew. It was a good thing that religion, such 
a rude notion as men had of it, prevailed in that 
narrow spot. When the tyrant would not respect 
God in all space, it was well that he should tremble 
before the sanctuary of a stone altar in a meeting- 
house. He would not respect a man, let him learn 
by beginning with a priest. If a murderer or a trai- 
tor took refuge in the heathen temples, nobody could 
drive him away or disturb him, for only God had 
jurisdiction in the holy place. So was it with the 
Hebrew cities of refuge : without, the atrocity of 
the world prevailed; within was the humanity of 
religion. The great begins small. 

I believe there is no nation acquainted with fire 
but makes this artificial distinction. It is the first 
feeble attempt of the religious faculty to assume 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 319 



power in the outward world ; in due time it will 
extend its jurisdiction over all time and space, over 
all things, all thoughts, all men, all deeds. 

It is curious to see how this faculty goes on en- 
larging its territory : one day religion watches over 
the beginning of human life; then over its end; 
next over its most eminent events, such as marriage, 
or the entrance upon an office, making a will, or 
giving testimony, all of wilich are connected with 
some act of religion. You see what it all points 
towards, — a coordination of all human faculties with 
the religious. Here is the great forest of human life, 
— a tangled brushwood, full of wild appetites and 
prowling calculations, — to be cleared up. Religion 
hews down a few trees, burns over a little spot, puts 
in a few choice seeds, and scares off therefrom the 
wild beasts of appetite, the cunning beasts of calcu- 
lation. This is only the beginning of clearing up 
the whole forest. What pains the savage in New 
England took with his little patch of artichokes, 
beans, pumpkins, and corn ! With his rude tools, 
how poorly he dug and watered it, and for what a 
stingy harvest ! He often chose the worst spot, he 
knew no better, and got but small return, not know- 
ing how to make bread out of the ground. His 
garden was a very little patch in the woods, and 
looked ridiculous beside the square leagues of wild 
woodland, a howling wilderness, that reached from 



320 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



the Kennebec to the Mississippi. But it was the 
first step towards cultivating the whole continent. 
So is it with the sacred things of the Hottentot 
and the Hebrew, the Caffre and the Christian. Let 
us not despise the rude commencement of great 
things. 

To simplify the matter, let us consider only the 
Actions pronounced religious. Certain deeds are 
selected and declared sacred, not on account of their 
natural usefulness or beauty, but by some caprice. 
These are declared the " ordinances of religion," the 
" sacraments " thereof, — things which represent and 
express religion, — which it is pronounced religious 
to do, and irreligious not to do. If there is a na- 
tional form of religion, then there is a national 
sacrament, established by authority ; so a social 
sacrament for society, established, like the "law of 
honor, ' by custom, the tacit consent of society. 
Thus is there a domestic sacrament for the family, 
and a personal ordinance of religion for the individ- 
ual man. Accordingly, these conventional actions 
come to be thought the exclusive expression of relig- 
ion, and therefore pleasing to God; they are not 
thought educational, means of growth, but final, the 
essential substance of religion. Some man is ap- 
pointed to look after the performance of these actions, 
and it is thought desirable to get the greatest possi- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 321 



ble number of persons to participate in them ; and 
he that turns many to these conventional sacraments 
is thought a great servant of God. 

Look at some of these artificial sacraments. The 
Indians of New England left tobacco or the fat of 
the deer on the rocks, an offering to the Great Spirit. 
With them it was an " ordinance of religion," and 
stood for an act of piety and morality both. The 
clerical Powwows recommended the action to the 
people. What a time they had of itj those red sav- 
ages here in the woods! It was thought impious 
not to perform the ritual act ; but their religion did 
not forbid its votary to lie, to steal, to torture his foe 
with all conceivable cruelty. 

Two thousand years ago our Teutonic fathers in 
the North of Europe worshipped a goddess named 
Hertha. They had a forest consecrated to her on 
an island ; therein was a sacred image of her, which 
was, now and then, carried about the country, on a 
carriage drawn by cows, — the statue covered with 
cloth and hid from sight. War was suspended 
wherever the chariot came, and weapons of iron put 
out of sight. It was then washed in a certain lake ; 
and, to shroud the whole in grim mystery, the priests 
who had performed the ritual act were drowned in 
the same lake. This was the great national sacra- 
ment of the people. It was wholly artificial, neither 
useful nor beautiful. The statue was an idol of 



322 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

wood ; the cows who drew it were no better than 
other cows. There was nothing holy in the image, 
the grove, or the ceremony ; the drowning of the 
priests was a cruel butchery. 

As a sacrament, the New- Hollander cuts off the 
last joint of the little finger of his son's left hand ; 
it is an offering to God, who has made the finger a 
joint too long for piety. 

The Hebrews had their outward ordinances of 
religion, — two personal sacraments of universal ob- 
ligation, binding on each man, — circumcision, and 
rest on the Sabbath. There were two more national 
sacraments, binding on the nation, — the formal 
worship of Jehovah, in Jerusalem, at stated times, 
and by a prescribed ritual ; and the celebration of 
the three national festivals. These were the sacra- 
ments of religion. To eat the paschal lamb was a 
" virtue," to taste swine's flesh a " sin." It was a 
capital crime to heal a sick man on Saturday. All 
these were artificial. Circumcision was a bad thing 
in itself, and gets its appropriate hit in the New 
Testament. Rest on the seventh day was no better 
than on the first ; no better than work on the second ; 
and worship in Jerusalem, at that time, and by that 
form, no better than worship at Jericho, by another 
form, and at a different time. The three feasts were 
no better than the festivals of Easter and of Yule. 
Yet those things were made the tests of piety and of 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 323 

morality. Not to attend to them was deemed im- 
piety against God. The Hebrew priest took great 
pains to interest the people in all this matter, to 
have the sacrifices offered, circumcision performed, 
the Sabbath and the feasts kept. He who hobbled 
the most in this la'me way, and on these artificial 
cratches, was thought the greatest priest. What a 
reputation did puritanical Nehemiah get by his zeal 
in these trifles ! But when Jesus of Nazareth came, 
his heart full of natural religion, he made way with 
most of these ordinances. 

Amongst Christians in general there is one spe- 
cific sacramental opinion, — that Jesus of Naza- 
reth is the only Son of God. The opinion itself 
is of no value. You may admit all the excellence 
of Jesus, and copy it all, and yet never have the 
opinion. I do not find that the historical person, 
Jesus, had any such opinion at all. Nay, the 
opinion is an evil, for it leads men to take this 
noble man and prostrate their mind and conscience 
before his words ; just as much as Jesus is elevated 
above the human is man sunk below it. But for 
ages, in the Church, this has been thought the one 
thing needful to make a man a Christian, to make 
him " pious " and acceptable to God, — the great 
internal ordinance and subjective sacrament of re- 
ligion. 

In the Catholic Church there is another sacra- 



324 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

mental opinion distinctive of that Christian sect, 
— the belief that the Roman Church is divine and 
infallible. The Protestants have also their distinc- 
tive, sacramental opinion, — that the Scriptures are 
divine and infallible. 

The consistent Catholic tells you there is no 
salvation without the belief of his sacramental doc- 
trine ; consistent Protestants claim the same value 
for their Shibboleth. So a man is to be " saved," 
and " reconciled with God " by faith ; a general 
faith, — the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the 
only Son of God ; a particular faith, — the belief in 
the divine and infallible Church, or the divine and 
infallible Scriptures. 

Then the Catholics have certain additional out- 
ward sacraments, which are subsidiary, and called 
the " ordinances of religion," — such as baptism, 
confirmation, penance, extreme unction, and the 
like. The Protestants have likewise their addi- 
tional outward sacraments subsidiary to the other, 
and which are their " ordinances of religion," — 
such as bodily presence at church, which is enjoined 
upon all, and is the great external artificial sacra- 
ment of the Protestants ; baptism for a few ; com- 
munion for a selecter few; and belief in all the 
doctrines of the special sect, — an internal sacra- 
ment which is actually enjoyed by only the smallest 
portion of the selectest few. 



CONVENTIONAL AXD NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 325 

Now all of these are purely artificial sacra- 
ments. Thev are not srood in themselves. Each 
of them has once had an educational value for 
mankind ; some of them still have, to a portion of 
mankind. But they are not valued for their ten- 
dency to promote natural piety and natural moral- 
ity, only as things good in themselves ; not as- 
means to the grace and helps to the glory of relig- 
ion,, but as religion itself. Ecclesiastically it is 
thought just as meritorious a thing to attend the 
preaching of a dull, ignorant, stupid fellow, who 
has nothing to teach and teaches it. as to listen to 
the eloquent piety of a Fenelon, Taylor, or Buck- 
minster, or to the beautiful philanthropy of St. 
E.och r Oberlin, or Channing. Bodily presence in 
the church being the sacrament, it is of small con- 
sequence what bulk of dulness presses the pulpit 
while the sacrament goes on. There is a "real 
presence," if naught else be real. An indifferent 
man baptized with water is thought a much better 
" Christian " than a man full of piety and morality 
but without the elemental sprinkling. 

If you ask a New England Powwow for proof 
of the religious character of a red man, he would 
have cited the offering of tobacco to the Great 
Spirit ; a Teutonic priest would refer to the rever- 
ence of his countrymen for the ceremony just 
spoken of; a New- Hollander would dwell on the 

28 



326 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

devotion of his neighbors, and show the little 
fingers cut off; a Hebrew would expatiate on the 
sacrament of circumcision, of Sabbath-keeping, of 
attendance upon the formal sacrifice at Jerusalem, 
the observance of the three feasts, and abstinence 
from swine's flesh; the Christian dwells on his dis- 
tinctive sacramental opinion, that Jesus is the Son 
of Jehovah. Ask the Catholic priests for proof 
that Joseph is a Christian, they will tell you, " He 
believes in the divine and infallible Roman Church, 
and receives its sacraments ; " ask the Protestant 
priests for a proof of their brother's piety, they will 
refer to his belief in the divine and infallible Scrip- 
tures, to his attendance at church, his baptism with 
water, his communion in wine and bread; and, if 
he is an eminent " saint," to his belief in all the 
technical opinions of his sect. True, they may all 
add other things which belong to real religion, but 
you will find that these artificial sacraments are 
the things relied on as proofs of religion, of Chris- 
tianity, the signs of acceptableness with God, and 
of eternal bliss. The others are only " of works," — 
these " of faith ; " one of " natural religion," the 
next of " revealed religion ; " morality is provisional, 
and the sacraments a finality. 

Accordingly, great pains are taken to bring men 
to these results. If a minister does this to large 
numbers, he is called " an eminent servant of the 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 327 

Lord," — that is, a great circumciser, a great 
sprinkler or plunger. Francis Xavier " converted " 
thousands of men to what he called Christianity ; 
they took the sacrament of belief, and of baptism, 
— in due time the others ; and Francis was made a 
saint. But it does not appear that he made them 
any better men, better sons, brothers, husbands, fa- 
thers, better neighbors and friends. He only brought 
them to the artificial sacrament. It is often the 
ambition of a Protestant minister to extend the 
jurisdiction of his artificial sacraments, to bring 
men to baptism and communion, not to industry, 
temperance, and bodily well-being ; not to wisdom, 
justice, friendship, and philanthropy; not to an 
absolute love of God, a joyous, absolute faith in 
the Dear Mother of us all. 

Let us do no injustice to those poor, leaky ves- 
sels of worship which we have borrowed from the 
Egyptians to whom we were once in bondage. 
They all have had their use. Man sets up his 
mythologies and his sacraments to suit his condi- 
tion of soul at the time. You cannot name a cere- 
mony connected with religion, howsoever absurd or 
wicked it may appear, but once it came out of the 
soul of some man who needed it ; and it helped him 
at the time. The tobacco offered to Hobomock at 
Narragansett, the procession of Hertha in Pannonia, 



328 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



the ritual mutilation in New Holland, in Judea, 
or, still worse, in Phrygia and Crete, all once had 
their meaning. Nay, human sacrifice was once the 
highest act of worship which some dark-minded 
savage could comprehend, and in good faith the 
victim was made ready at Mexico or at Moriah. 
But the best of them are only educational, not final ; 
and the sooner we can outgrow those childish 
things, the better. 

Men often mock at such things. What mouths 
Arnobius and Augustine made at the heathen super- 
stitions, taking their cue from pagan Lucian of 
Samosata, the prince of scoffers ; they have given 
the face of Christendom an anti-Pagan twist which 
it keeps to this day. How Voltaire and his accom- 
plished coadjutors repeated the mock, at the cost of 
the followers of Augustine and Arnobius ! This is 
hardly wise, and not reverent. Those things are to 
be regarded as the work of children, who have their 
snow-houses in winter, their earth-houses in sum- 
mer, their games and plays, — trifles to us, but seri- 
ous things to the little folk ; of great service in the 
education of the eye and hand, — nay, of the under- 
standing itself. How the little boy cries because 
he cannot spin his top like the older brothers ! He 
learns to spin it, and is delighted with its snoring 
hum ; learning skill by that, he by and by goes on 
to higher acts of boyish life. So is it with these 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 329 



artificial sacraments. Xavier brought a new top to 
the men of India ; Charlemagne slew the Saxons 
who would not accept his, — as rude boys force the 
little ones from old to new sports. 

It is no evil to have some things of the sort ; no 
more than it is for a boy to ride a stick before he 
can mount a horse ; or for a little girl to fill her arms 
with a Nuremberg baby before she can manage hu- 
man children. Only the evil is, that these things 
are thought the real and natural sacrament of relig- 
ion ; and so the end thereof is lost in the means. 
That often happens, and is fatal to religious groAvth. 
If the boy become a man, still kept to his wooden 
stick, counting it a real horse, better than all the 
trotters and pacers in Connecticut, if he had stables 
for sticks in place of steeds, and men to groom and 
tend his wooden hobby ; if the girl, become a wo- 
man now, still hugged her doll from Nuremberg, 
making believe it was a child, — loved it better than 
sons and daughters, and left her own baby to dandle 
a lump of wood, counting a child only provisional, 
• and the doll a finality, — then we should see the 
same error that was committed by Xavier and 
others, and repeated by clergymen and whole troops 
of Christians. I have seen assemblies of Christian 
divines, excellent and self-denying men, in earnest 
session and grave debate, who seemed to me only 
28* 



330 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



■venerable boys riding cockhorse on their grandam's 
crutch. 

The general Christian belief, that Jesus was the 
Son of God, is now no spiritual sacrament ; the 
specific belief of the Catholic or Protestant at this 
day is worth no more. Nay, all these stand in the 
way of the human race, and hinder our march. So 
the outward Christian sacraments — baptism, confir- 
mation, communion, confession, penance, and the 
rest — seem to me only stones of stumbling in the 
way of mankind ; they are as far from the real ordi- 
nances of religion as dandling a doll is from the 
mother's holy duty. 

The natural and real ordinance of religion is in 
general a manly life, all the man's faculties of body 
and spirit developed or developing in their natural 
and harmonious way, the body ruled by the spirit, 
its instincts all in their places, the mind active, the 
conscience, the affections, the soul, all at work in 
their natural way. Religion is the sacrament of 
religion ; itself its ordinance. Piety and goodness 
•are its substance, and all normal life its form. The 
love of God and the love of man, with all that 
belongs thereto, worship with every limb of the 
body, every faculty of the spirit, every power we 
possess over matter or men, — that is the sacra- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 331 

mental substance of religion ; a life obedient to the 
love of God and of man, — that is the sacramental 
form of religion. All else is means, provisional ; 
this the end, a finality. Thus my business, my 
daily work with the hand, if an honest and manly 
work, is the ordinance of religion to my body ; seek- 
ing and expressing truth and beauty is the ordinance 
of religion to my mind ; doing justice to all about 
me is the moral ordinance of religion ; loving men 
is the natural sacrament of the affections ; holiness 
is the natural ordinance of the soul. Putting all 
together, — my internal consciousness of piety and 
goodness, my outward life which represents that, is 
the great natural sacrament, the one compendious 
and universal ordinance. Then my religion is not 
one thing, and my life another ; the two are one. 
Thus religion is the sacrament of religion, morality 
the test of piety. 

If you believe God limited to one spot, then 
that is counted specifically holy ; and your religion 
draws or drives you thither. If you believe that 
religion demands only certain particular things, 
they will be thought sacramental, and the doing 
thereof the proof of religion. But when you know 
that God is infinite, is everywhere, then all space 
is holy ground ; all days are holy time ; all truth is 
God's word ; all persons are subjects of religious 
duty, invested with unalienable religious rights, 



332 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

and claiming respect and love as fellow-children 
of the same dear God. Then, too, all work be- 
comes sacred and venerable ; common life, your 
highest or your humblest toil, is your element of 
daily communion with men, as your act of prayer is 
your communion with the Infinite God. 

This is the history of all artificial sacraments. 
A man rises with more than the ordinary amount of 
religion ; by the accident of his personal character, 
or by some circumstance or event in his history, he 
does some particular thing as an act of religion. 
To him it is such, and represents his feeling of peni- 
tence, or resolution, or gratitude, or faith in God. 
Other men wish to be as religious as he, and do 
the same thing, hoping to get thereby the same 
amount of religion. By and by the deed itself is 
mistaken for religion, repeated again and again. 
The feeling which first prompted it is all gone, 
the act becomes merely mechanical, and thus of no 
value. 

Thousands of years ago some man of wicked 
ways resolved to break from them and start anew, 
converted by some saint. He calls the neighbors 
together at the side of the Euphrates, the Jordan, 
or the Nile, — elements which he deems divine, 
— and plunges in : " Thus I will wipe off all an- 
cient sin," says he ; " by this act I pledge my- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 333 

self to a new life, — this holy element is witness 
to my vow ; let the saints bear record ! " The 
penitence is real, the resolution is real, the act of 
self-baptism means something. By and by other 
penitent men do the same, from the same motive, 
struck by his example. Crowds look on from 
curiosity; a few idly imitate the form; then many 
from fashion. Soon it is all ceremony, and means 
nothing. It is the property of the priest ; it is 
cherished still, and stands in place of religion. 
The single, momentary dispensation of water is 
thought of more religious importance than the 
daily dispensation of righteousness. Men go 
leagues long on pilgrimage, — to dip them in the 
sacred stream, and return washed, but not clean ; 
baptized, but neither beautiful nor blameless. At 
length it is thought that baptism, the poor, out- 
ward act, atones for a life of conscious sin. Imperial 
Constantine, hypocritical and murderous, mourn- 
ing that the Church will not twice baptize, is con- 
verted, but cunningly postpones his plunge till old 
age, that he may sin his fill, then dip and die clean 
and new. 

So is it with all artificial forms. When they 
become antiquated, the attempt to revive them, to 
put new life therein, is always useless and unnat- 
ural: it is only a show, too often a cheat. At 
this day the routine of form is valued most by 



334 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

those who care only for the form, and tread the 
substance underneath their feet. Put the wig of 
dead men's hair on your bald head, it is only a 
barber's cap, not nature's graceful covering, and 
underneath, the hypocritic head lies bald and bare. 
Put it on your head if you will, but do not insist 
that little children and fair-haired maids shall shear 
off the the locks of nature, and hide their heads 
beneath your deceitful handiwork. The boy is 
grown up to manhood, he rides real horses ; nay, 
owns, tames, and rears them for himself. How 
idle to ask him to mount again his hobby, or 
to ride cockhorse on his grandam's crutch once 
more ! You may galvanize the corpse into mo- 
mentary and convulsive action, not into life. You 
may baptize men by the thousand, plunging them 
in the Jordan and Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, and 
Irrawaddy, if you will, surpassing even Ignatius 
and Francis Xavier. Nay, such is the perfection 
of the arts, that, with steam and Cochituate to 
serve you, you might sprinkle men in battalions, 
yea, whole regiments at a dash. What boots it all? 
A drop of piety is worth all the Jordan, Euphrates, 
Indus, Ganges, Irrawaddy, — worth all the oceans 
which the good God ever made. 

Men love dramatic scenes. Imagine, then, a troop 
of men — slave-traders, kidnappers, and their crew — 
come up for judgment at the throne of Christ, " Be- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 335 



hold your evil deeds ! " cries Jesus in their ears. 
" Dear Lord," say they, " speak not of that ; we 
were all baptized, in manhood or in infancy, gave 
bodily presence at a church, enrolled our names 
among the priest's elect, believed the whole creed, 
and took the sacrament in every form. What 
wouldst thou more, dear Christ? Dost thou ask 
provisional morality of us ? Are not these things 
ultimate, the finality of salvation ? " 

I always look with pain on any effort to put the 
piety of our times into the artificial sacraments of 
another and a ruder age. It is often attempted, 
sometimes with pure and holy feelings, with great 
self-denial; but it is always worthless. The new 
wine of religion must be put into new bottles. See 
what improvements are yearly made in science, in 
agriculture, weaving, ship-building, in medicine, in 
every art. Shall there be none in religion, none in 
the application of its great sentiments to daily life ? 
Shall we improve only in our ploughs, not also in 
the forms of piety ? 

At this day great pains are taken to put religion 
into artificial sacraments, which, alas ! have no con- 
nection with a manly life. I do not know of a score 
of ministers devoting their time and talents solely to 
the advancement of natural piety and natural moral- 
ity. I know of hundreds who take continual pains 
to promote those artificial sacraments, — earnest, 



336 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

devout, and self-denying men. Why is this so ? It 
is because they think the ceremony is religion ; not 
religion's accidental furniture, but religion itself. It 
is painful to see such an amount of manly and 
earnest effort, of toil and self-denial and prayer, de- 
voted to an end so little worth. The result is very 
painful, more so than the process itself. 

We call ourselves a Christian people, a religious 
nation. Why ? Are we a religious people because 
the heart of the nation is turned towards God and 
his holy law ? The most prominent churches just 
now have practically told us, that there is no law of 
God above the statute politicians write on parch- 
ment in the Capitol; that Congress is higher than 
the Almighty, the President a finality; and that 
God must hide his head behind the Compromise ! 
Is it because the highest talent of the nation, its 
ablest zeal, its stoutest heroism, is religious in its 
motive, religious in its aim, religious in its means, 
religious in its end ? Nobody pretends that. A 
respectable man would be thought crazy, and called 
a " fanatic," who should care much for religion in 
any of its higher forms. Self-denial for popularity 
and for money or office, — that is common; it 
abounds in every street. Self-denial for religion, — 
is that so common? Are we called Christians be- 
cause we value the character of Jesus of Nazareth, 
and wish to be like him ? Is it the ambition of cal- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 337 



culating fathers, that their sons be closely like the 
friend of publicans and sinners ? Nay, is it the am- 
bition of reverend and most Christian clergymen to 
be like him ? — I mean, to think with the freedom 
he thought withal ; to be just with such severe and 
beauteous righteousness ; to love with such affec- 
tion, — so strong, yet so tender, so beautiful, so wide, 
so womanly and deep ? Is it to have faith in God 
like his absolute trust ; a faith in God's person and 
his function too ; a faith in truth, in justice, in holi- 
ness, and love ; a faith in God as Cause and Provi- 
dence, in man as the effect and child of God ? Is it 
the end of laymen and clergymen to produce such a 
religion, — to build up and multiply Christians of 
that manly sort ? 

Compliance with forms is made the test of piety, 
its indispensable condition. These forms are com- 
monly twofold : liturgical, — compliance with the 
ritual; dogmatical, — compliance with the creed. It 
is not shown that the rite has a universal, natural 
connection with piety ; only that it was once histor- 
ically connected with a pious man. Nobody thinks 
that circumcision, baptism, or taking the Lord's sup- 
per, has a natural and indispensable connection with 
piety ; only it is maintained that these things have 
been practised by pious men, and so are imposed on 
others by their authority. It is not shown that the 

29 

I 1 1 



338 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

creed has its foundation in the nature of man, still 
less in the nature of God ; only that it rested once 
in the consciousness of some pious man, and has 
also been imposed on us by authority. So, it is not 
shown that these tests have any natural connection 
with religion ; only that they once had an histori- 
cal connection ; and that, of course, was either tem- 
porary, naturally ending with the stage of civiliza- 
tion which it belonged to, or even personal, peculiar 
to the man it begun with. 

Yet it is remarkable how much those temporary 
•or mere personal expedients are set up as indispen- 
sable conditions and exclusive tests of piety. The 
Catholic Church, on the whole, is an excellent insti- 
tution ; Christendom could no more do without it, 
than Europe dispense with monarchies ; but the 
steadfast Catholic must say, " Out of the Church 
there is no piety, no religion beyond the Church's 
ritual and creed." The Protestant churches are, on 
the whole, an excellent institution ; Christendom 
could no more dispense with them, than New Eng- 
land with her almshouses and jails ; but the steadfast 
Protestant will say, " There can be no piety without 
^accepting the Bible as the word of God, no saving 
rreligion without faith in the letter of Scripture." 
Not only has the Catholic his Shibboleth, and the 
Protestant his, but each sect its own. The Calvinist 
says, " There is no piety without a belief in the Trin- 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 339 



ity." The Unitarians say, " There is no piety with- 
out a belief in the miracles of the New Testament" 
The Jews require a knowledge of Moses ; Mahome- 
tans, a reverence for their prophet; and Christians, 
in general, agree there is no " saving piety " without 
submissive reverence to Christ. The late Dr. Ar- 
nold, a most enlightened and religious man, declared 
that he had no knowledge of God except as mani- 
fested through Jesus Christ. Yet all the wide world 
over, everywhere, men know of God and worship 
Him, — the savage fearing, while the enlightened 
learns to love. 

Since compliance with the ritual and the creed is 
made the sole and exclusive test of piety, religious 
teachers aim to produce this compliance in both 
kinds, and succeeding therein, are satisfied that 
piety dwells in their disciples' heart. But the ritual 
compliance may be purely artificial ; not something 
which grows out of the man, but sticks on. The 
compliance with the doctrine may be apparent, and 
not real at all. The word belief is taken in a good 
many senses. It does not always mean a total ex- 
perience of the doctrine, a realizing sense thereof ; 
not always an intellectual conviction. They often 
are the best believers of the creed who have the 
least experience in the love of God, but little intel- 
lect, and have made no investigation of the matter 
credited. Belief often means only that the believer 



340 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



does not openly reject the doctrine he is said to 
hold. So the thing thus believed is not always a 
new branch growing out of the old bole ; nor is it a 
foreign scion grafted in, and living out of the old 
stock, as much at home as if a native there, and 
bearing fruit after its better kind ; it is merely stuck 
into the bark of the old tree, — nay, often not even 
that, but only lodged in the branches, — fruitless, 
leafless, lifeless, and dry as a stick, — a deformity, 
and without use. 

In this way it comes to pass that compliance with 
the rite, and belief in a doctrine, which in some 
men were the result of a long life of piety and hard 
struggle, actually mean nothing at all. So that the 
ritual and the creed have no more effect in pro- 
moting the " convert's " piety and morality, than 
would belief in the multiplication-table and the 
habit of saying it over. You are surprised that the 
doctrines of Christ do not affect the Christian, and 
ceremonies which once revolutionized the heart they 
were born in, now leave the worshipper as cold as 
the stone beneath his knee. Be not astonished at 
the result. The marble does not feel the com- 
mandments which are graven there ; the commun- 
ion chalice never tastes the consecrated wine. 
The marble and metal are only mechanical in their 
action ; it was not meant that they should taste or 
feel. 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 341 



Then piety, as a sentiment, is taken as the whole 
of religion ; its end is in itself. The tests, liturgical 
or dogmatic, show that piety is in the man ; all he 
has next to do is to increase the quantity. The 
proof of that increase is a greatening of love for the 
form and for the doctrine ; the habit of dawdling 
about the one and talking about the other. The 
sentiment of religion is allowed to continue a sen- 
timent, and nothing more ; soon it becomes less, a 
sentimentalism, a sickly sentiment which will never 
beget a deed. 

It is a good thing to get up pious feeling ; there 
is no danger we shall have too much of that. But 
the feeling should lead to a thought, the thought to 
a deed, else it is of small value ; at any rate, it does 
not do all of its work for the individual, and noth- 
ing for any one beside. This religious sentimen- 
tality is called Mysticism or Pietism, in the bad 
sense of those two words. In most of the churches 
which have a serious purpose, and are not content 
with the mere routine of office, it is a part of the 
pastor's aim to produce piety, the love of God. 
That is right, for piety, in its wide sense, is the 
foundation of all manly excellence. But in general 
they seem to know only these liturgical and dog- 
matic tests of piety ; hence they aim to have piety 
put in that conventional form, and reject with scorn 
29* 



342 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

all other and natural modes of expressing love to 
God. 

It is a good thing to aim to produce piety, a 
great good : an evil, to limit in this way ; a great 
evil, not to leave it free to take its natural form ; a 
very great evil, to keep it indoors so Long, that it 
becomes sick and good for nothing, not daring to go 
out at alL 

It is remarkable how often ecclesiastical men 
make this mistake. They judge a man to be relig- 
ious or otherwise, solely by "this test. You hear 
strict ministers speak of a layman as an " amiable 
man," but " not pious." They do not know that 
amiableness is one form of natural piety, and that 
the more piety a man gets, the more amiable he 
becomes. The piety which they know has no con- 
nection with honesty, none with friendship, none 
with philanthropy ; its only relations are with the 
ritual and creed. When the late John Quincy 
Adams died, his piety was one topic of commen- 
dation in most of the many sermons preached in 
memory of the man. What was the proof or sign 
of that piety? Scarcely any one found it in his 
integrity, which had not failed for many a year ; or 
his faithful attendance on his political duty ; or his 
unflinching love of liberty, and the noble war the 
aged champion fought for the unalienable rights 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 343 

of man. No ! They found the test in the fact that 
he was a member of a church ; that he went to 
meeting, and was more decorous than most men 
while there ; that he daily read the Bible, and re- 
peated each night a simple and beautiful little 
prayer, which mothers teach their babes of grace. 
No "regular minister," I think, found the proof of 
his piety in his zeal for man's welfare, in the clean- 
ness of his life, and hands which never took a bribe. 
One, I remember, found a sign of that piety in the 
fact, that he never covered his reverend head till 
fairly out of church ! 

You remember the Orthodox judgment on Dr. 
Channing. Soon after his death, it was declared in 
a leading Trinitarian journal of America, that with- 
out doubt he had gone to the place of torment, to 
expiate the sin of denying the Deity of Christ. All 
the noble life of that great and good and loving man 
was not thought equal to the formal belief, that the 
Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehovah of the Psalms. 

After ecclesiastical men produce their piety, they 
do not aim to set it to do the natural work of man- 
kind. Morality is not thought to be the proof of 
piety, nor even the sign of it. They dam up the 
stream of human nature till they have got a suffi- 
cient head of piety, and then, instead of setting it 
to turn the useful mill of life, or even drawing it off 
to water the world's dry grounds, they let the waters 



344 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

run over the dam, promoting nothing but sectarian 
froth and noise ; or, if it be allowed to turn the 
wheels, it must not grind sound corn for human 
bread, but chiefly rattle the clapper of the theologic 
mill. 

The most serious sects in America now and then 
have a revival. The aim is to produce pietism ; 
but commonly you do not find the subjects of a re- 
vival more disposed to morality after that than 
before ; it is but seldom they are better sons or more 
loving lovers, partners or parents more faithful than 
before. It is only the ritual and the creed which 
they love the better. Intelligent men of the serious 
sects will tell you, such revivals do more harm than 
good, because the feelings are excited unnaturally, 
and then not directed to their appropriate, useful 
work. 

The most important actual business of the clergy 
is, first, to keep up the present amount of morality. 
All sects agree in that work, and do a service by the 
attempt. For there are always sluggish men, slum- 
berers, who need to be awaked, loiterers, who must 
be called out to, and hurried forward. Next, it is to 
produce piety, try it by these tests, and put it into 
these forms. All sects likewise agree in that, and 
therein they do good, and a great good. But after 
the piety is produced, it is not wholly natural piety, 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 345 



nor do they aim to apply it to the natural work 
thereof. 

Such is the most important business of the pulpit, 
— almost its only business. Hence unpopular vices, 
vices below the average virtue of society, get abun- 
dantly preached at. And popular virtues, virtues up 
to the average of society, get abundantly praised. 
But popular vices go un whipped, and unpopular 
virtues all unhonored pass the pulpit by. The great 
Dagon of the popular idolatry stands there in the 
market-place, to receive the servile and corrupting 
homage of the crowd, dashing the little ones to ruin 
at his feet ; the popular priest is busy with his Phil- 
istine pietism, and never tells the people that it is an 
idol, and not God, which they adore. It is not his 
function to do that. Hence a man of more than 
the average excellence, more than the average wis- 
dom, justice, philanthropy, or faith in God, and reso- 
lutely bent on promoting piety and morality in all 
their forms, is thought out of place in a sectarian 
pulpit ; and is just as much out of place there, as a 
Unitarian would be in a Trinitarian pulpit, or a Cal- 
vinist in a Unitarian, — as much so as a weaver of 
broadcloth would be in a mill for making ribbons or 
gauze. 

Hence, too, it comes to pass, that it is not thought 
fit to attack popular errors in the pulpit, nor speak of 
wide spread public sins ; not even to expose the fault 



346 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

of your own denomination to itself. The sins of 
Unitarians may be aimed at only from Trinitarian 
pulpits. It is not lawful for a sect to be instructed 
by a friend. The sins of commerce must not be re- 
buked in a trading town. In time of war we must 
not plead for peace. The sins of politics the minis- 
ter must never touch. Why not? Because they are 
" actual sins of the times," and his kingdom " is not 
of this world." Decorous ministers are ordained and 
appointed to apologize for respectable iniquity, and 
to eulogize every wicked but popular, great man. 
So long as the public sepulchres may not be cleansed, 
there must be priestly Pharisees to wash their out- 
side white. The Northern priest is paid to conse- 
crate the tyranny of capital, as the Southern to con- 
secrate the despotism of the master over his negro 
slave. Men say you must not touch the actual sins 
of the times in a pulpit, — it would hurt men's feel- 
ings ; and they must not be disquieted from their 
decorous, their solemn, their accustomed sleep. 
" You must preach the Gospel, young fanatic," 
quoth the world. And that means preaching the t 
common doctrines so as to convict no man's con- 
science of any actual sin ; then press out a little ; 
pietism, and decant it off into the old leathern bot- 
tles of the Church. 

The late Mr. Polk affords a melancholy example 
of the effect of this mode of proceeding. On his 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 347 

death-bed, when a man ought to have nothing to do 
but to die, the poor man remembers that he has 
" not been baptized," wishes to know if there is any 
" hope " for him, receives the dispensation of water 
in the usual form, and is thought to die " a Chris- 
tian ! " What a sad sign of the state of religion 
amongst us ! To him or to his advisers it did not 
seem to occur, that, if we live right, it is of small 
consequence how we die ; that a life full of duties is 
the real baptism in the name of man and God, and 
the sign of the Holy Spirit. The churches never 
taught him so. But snivelling at the end is not a 
Christian and a manly death. 

The effect of getting up the feeling of piety, and 
stopping with that, is like the effect of reading nov- 
els and nothing else. Thereby the feelings of be- 
nevolence, of piety, of hope, of joy, are excited, but 
lead to no acts ; the character becomes enervated, 
the mind feeble, the conscience inert, the will im- 
potent ; the heart, long wont to weep at the novel- 
ist's unreal woes, at sorrows in silk and fine linen, is 
harder than Pharaoh's when a dirty Irish girl asks 
for a loaf in the name of God, or when a sable 
mother begs money w T herewith to save her daughter 
from the seraglios of New Orleans. Self-denial for 
the sake of noble enterprise is quite impossible to 
such. All the great feelings naturally lead to com- 



348 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



mensurate deeds ; to excite the feeling and leave un- 
done the deed, is baneful in the extreme. 

I do not say novels are not good reading and 
profitable ; they are, just so far as they stimulate the 
intellect, the conscience, the affections, the soul, to 
healthful action, and set the man to work ; but just 
so far as they make you content with mere feeling, 
and constrain the feeling to be nothing but feeling, 
they are pernicious. Such reading is mental dissi- 
pation. To excite the devotional feelings, to pro- 
duce a great love of God, and not allow that to 
become work, is likewise dissipation, all the more 
pernicious, — dissipation of the conscience, of the 
soul. I do not say it comes in the name of self-in- 
dulgence, as the other ; it is often begun in the 
name of self-denial, and achieved at great cost of 
self-denial too. 

Profligacy of the religious sentiment, voluptuous- 
ness with God, is the most dangerous of luxuries. 
Novel-reading, after the fashion hinted at, is highly 
dangerous. How many youths and maidens are 
seriously hurt thereby ! But as far as I can judge, 
in all Christendom there are more that suffer from 
this spiritual dissoluteness. I speak less to censure 
than to warn. 1 hate to see a man uncharitable, 
dishonest, selfish, mean, and sly, — "for ever stand- 
ing on his guard and watching " unto fraud. I am 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 349 

sorry to hear of a woman given up to self-indul- 
gence, accomplished, but without the highest grace, 
— womanly good works, — luxurious, indolent, 
" born to consume the corn," - — that is bad enough. 
But when I learn that this hard man is a class 
leader, and has " the gift of prayer," is a famous 
hand at a conference, the builder of churches, a 
great defender of ecclesiastical doctrines and devo- 
tional forms, that he cries out upon every heresy, 
banning men in the name of God ; when I hear 
that this luxurious woman delights in mystic devo- 
tion, and has a wantonness of prayer, - — it makes 
me far more sad; and there is then no hope! The 
kidnapper at his court is a loathly thing ; but the 
same kidnapper at his "communion ! " — great God ! 
and has thy Church become so low ! Let us turn 
off our eyes and look away. 

Hence it comes to pass, that much of all this 
ecclesiastic pains to produce piety is abortive ; it 
ends in sickness and routine. Men who have the 
reputation of piety in a vulgar sense are the last 
men you would look to for any great good work. 
They will not oppose slavery and war and lust of 
land, — national sins that are popular ; nor intem- 
perance and excessive love of gold, — popular, per- 
sonal, and social sins. They would not promote 
the public education of the people, and care not to 
; raise woman to her natural equality with man. " It 

30 



350 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



is no part of piety to do such things," say they ; 
" we are not under the covenant of works, but of 
grace only. What care we for painful personal 
righteousness, which profiteth little, when only the 
imputed can save us, and that so swiftly ! " 

Nay, they hinder all these great works. The bit- 
terest opposition to the elevation of all men is made 
in the name of devotion ; so is the defence of 
slavery and war, and the flat degradation of wo- 
man. Here is a church, which at a public meeting 
solemnly instructs its minister elect not to preach 
on politics, or on the subjects of reform. They 
want him to " preach piety," " nothing but piety," 
" evangelical piety ; " not a weekday piety but a 
Sabbath piety, which is up and at church once in 
seven days, — keeps her pew of a Sunday, but her 
bed all the week, — ghastly, lean, dyspeptic, cough- 
ing, bowed together, and in nowise able to lift up 
herself. 

Hence " piety " gets a bad reputation amongst 
philanthropists, as it serves to hinder the develop- 
ment of humanity. Even amongst men of business 
a reputation for " piety " would make a new comer 
distrusted ; the money-lender would look more care- 
fully to his collateral security. 

At Blenheim and at Windsor you will find 
clipped yew-trees, cut into the shape of hearts and 
diamonds, nay, of lions and eagles, looking like any 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 351 



thing but trees. So in Boston, in all New Eng- 
land, everywhere in Christendom, you find clipped 
men, their piety cut into various artificial forms, 
looking like any thing but men. The saints of the 
popular theology, what are they good for ? For 
belief and routine, — for all of religion save only 
real piety and morality. 

Persons of this stamp continually disappoint 
us. You expect manly work, and cannot get it 
done. Did you ever see little children play " Mon- 
ey ? " They clasp their hands together and strike 
them gently on their knee ; the elastic air com- 
pressed by this motion sounds like the jingling of 
small silver coin. You open the hand : there is 
nothing in it, — not small money enough to buy a 
last year's walnut or a blueberry. It was only 
the jingle of the money, — all of money but the 
money's worth. So is this unnatural form of 
piety ; it has the jingle of godliness, and seems just 
as good as real piety, until you come to spend it; 
then it is good for nothing, — it will not pass any- 
where amongst active men. A handful of it comes 
to nothing. Alas me ! the children play at " Money," 
and call it sport; men grown play with a similar 
delusion, and call it the worship of God- 
Now there is much of this false piety in the 
world, produced by this false notion, that there are 
only these two tests of piety. It leads to a great 



352 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

deal of mischief. Men are deceived who look to 
you for work ; you yourself are deceived in hoping 
for peace, beauty, comfort, and gladness, from such 
a deception. 

" So, floating clown a languid stream, 
The lily-leaves oft lilies seem, 
Reflecting back the whitened beam 

Of morning's slanting sun ; — 
But as I near and nearer came, 
I missed the lily's fragrant flame, — 

The gay deceit was done. 
No snow-white lily blossomed fair, 
There came no perfume on the air ; 
Only an idle leaf lay there, 

And wantoned in the sun." 

Under these circumstances, piety dies away till 
there is nothing left but the name and the form. 
There is the ritual, the belief, such as it is, but 
nothing else. It is the symbol of narrowness and 
bigotry, often of self-conceit, sometimes of envy 
and malice and all uncharitableness. It leads to 
no outward work, it produces no inward satisfac- 
tion, no harmony with yourself, no concord with 
your brother, no unity w T ith God. It leads to no 
real and natural tranquillity, no income of the 
Holy Spirit, no access of new being, no rest in 
God. There is the form of godliness, and nothing 
of its power. Some earnest-minded men see this, 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 353 



and are disgusted with all that bears the name of 
religion. Do you wonder at this ? Remove the 
cause, as well as blame the consequence. 

If pains be taken to cultivate piety, and, as it 
grows up, if it be left to its own natural develop- 
ment, it will have its own form of manifestation. 
The feeling of love to God, the Infinite Object, will 
not continue a mere feeling. Directed to the Infi- 
nite Object, it will be directed also towards men, 
and become a deed. As you love God the more, 
you must also love men the more, and so must 
serve them better. Your prayer will not content 
you, though beautiful as David's loftiest Psalm ; 
you must put it into a practice more lovely yet- 
Then your prayer will help you, your piety be a 
real motive, a perpetual blessing. It will increase 
continually, rising as prayer to come down again 
as practice, — will first raise " a mortal to the skies," 
then draw that angel down. So the water which 
rises in electric ecstasy to heaven, and gleams in 
the rising or descending sun, comes down as 
simple dew and rain, to quiet the dust in the com- 
mon road, to cool the pavement of the heated town, 
to wash away the un healthiness of city lanes, and 
nurse the common grass which feeds the horses and 
the kine. 

30* 



354 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 



At the beginning of your growth in piety, there 
is, doubtless, need of forms, of special time and 
place. There need not be another's form, or there 
may be, just as you like. The girl learning to 
write imitates carefully each mark on the copy, 
thinking of the rules for holding the pen. But as 
you grow, you think less of the form, of the sub- 
stance more. So the pen becomes not a mere in- 
strument, but almost a limb ; the letters are formed 
even without a thought. Without the form, you 
have the effect thereof. 

If there be piety in the heart, and it be allowed 
to live and grow and attain its manly form, it will 
quicken every noble faculty in man. Morality will 
not be dry, and charity will not be cold ; the reason 
will not grovel with mere ideas, nor the understand- 
ing with calculations ; the shaft of wit will lose its 
poison, merriment its levity, common life its tedium. 
Disappointment, sorrow, suffering, will not break the 
heart, which will find soothing and comfort in its 
saddest woe. The consciousness of error, that 
vexes oft the noble soul, will find some compen- 
sation for its grief. Remorse, which wounds men 
so sadly and so sore, will leave us the sweetest 
honey, gleaned up from the flowers we trod upon 
when we should have gathered their richness, and 
happily will sting us out of our offence. 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 355 

The common test of Christianity is not the 
natural sacrament ; it is only this poor conventional 
thing. Look at this. The land is full of Bibles. I 
am glad of it. I am no worshipper of the Bible, yet 
I reverence its wisdom, I honor its beauty of holi- 
ness, and love exceedingly the tranquil trust in God 
which its great authors had. Some of the best 
things that I have ever learned from man this book 
has taught me. Think of the great souls in this 
Hebrew Old Testament ; of the two great men in 
the New, — Jesus, who made the great religious 
motion in the world's parliament, and Paul, who 
supported it ! I am glad the Bible goes every- 
where. But men take it for master, not for help ; 
read it as a sacrament, not to get a wiser and a 
higher light. They worship its letter, and the bet- 
ter spirit of Moses, of Esaias, of the Holy Psalms, 
so old and yet so young, so everlasting in their 
beauteous faith in God, — the sublime spirit of one 
greater than the temple, and lord of the Sabbath, 
who scorned to put the new wine of God into the 
old and rotten bags of men — that is not in Christen- 
dom. O, no ! men do not ask for that; The yeasty 
soul would rend asunder tradition's leathern bags. 
Worship of Bibles never made men write Bibles ; 
it hinders us from living them. Worship no things 
for that ; not the created, but, O Creator ! let 



i 



356 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

us worship Thee. Catholicism is worship of a 
church, instead of God ; Protestantism is worship 
of a book. Both could not generate a Jesus or a 
Moses. 

For proof of religion men appeal to our churches, 
built by the self-denial of hard-working men. They 
prove nothing, — nay, nothing at all. The polyga- 
mous Mormons far outdo the Christians in their 
zeal. The throng of men attending church is small 
proof of religion. Think of the vain things which 
lead men to this church or to that; of the vain 
thoughts which fill them there ; of the vain words 
they hear, or which are only spoke, not even heard! 
What a small amount of real piety and real moral- 
ity is needed to make up a popular " Christian ! n 
Alas ! we have set up an artificial sacrament : we 
comply with that, then call ourselves religious, — 
yea, Christians. We try ecclesiastic metal by its 
brassy look and brassy ring, then stamp it with 
the popular image of our idolatry, and it passes cur- 
rent in the shop, tribute fit for Caesar. The humble 
publican of the parable, not daring to lift up his 
eyes to heaven ; the poor widow, with her two 
mites that made a farthing ; the outcast Samari- 
tan, with his way-side benevolence to him that fell 
among the thieves, — might shame forth from the 
Christian Church each Pharisee who drops his 
minted and his jingling piety, with brassy noise, 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 357 

into the public chest. Render unto Caesar the 
things that be Caesar's. 

The real test of religion is its natural sacrament, 
— is life. To know whom you worship, let me see 
you in your shop, let me overhear you in your trade ; 
let me know how you rent your houses, how you 
get your money, how you keep it, or how it is spent. 
It is easy to pass the Sunday idle, idly lounging in 
the twilight of idle words, or basking in the sun- 
shine of some strong man's most earnest speech. It 
is easy to repeat the words of David, or of Jesus, 
and to call it prayer. But the sacramental test of 
your religion is not your Sunday idly spent, not the 
words of David or of Jesus that you repeat ; it is 
your weekday life, your works, and not your words. 
Tried by this natural test, the Americans are a hea- 
then people, not religious ; far, far from that. Com- 
pare us with the Chinese by the artificial standard 
of the missionary, we are immensely above them ; 
by the natural sacrament of obedience to the law of 
God, how much is the Christian before the heathen 
man ? 

The national test of religion is the nation's jus- 
tice, — justice to other states abroad, the strong, the 
weak, and justice to all sorts of men at home. The 
law-book is the nation's creed ; the newspapers 
chant the actual liturgy and service of the day. 
What avails it that the priest calls us " Christian," 



358 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

while the newspapers and the Congress prove us 
infidel ? The social sacrament of religion is justice 
to all about you in society, — is honesty in trade 
and work, is friendship and philanthropy ; the relig- 
ious strong must help the weak. The ecclesiastical 
sacrament of a church must be its effort to promote 
piety and goodness in its own members first, and 
then to spread it round the world. Care for the 
bodies and souls of men, that is the real sacrament 
and ordinance of religion for society, the Church 
and State. 

For the individual man, for you and me, there are 
two great natural sacraments. One is inward and 
not directly seen, save by the eye of God and by 
your own, — the continual effort, the great life-long 
act of prayer to be a man, with a man's body 
and a man's spirit, doing a man's duties, having a 
man's rights, and thereby enjoying the welfare of a 
man. That is one, — the internal ordinance of relig- 
ion. The other is like it, — the earnest attempt to 
embody this in outward life, to make the manly act 
of prayer a manly act of practice too. These are 
the only sacraments for the only worship of the only 
God. Let me undervalue no means of growth, no 
hope of glory; these are the ends of growth, the 
glory which men hope. 

Is not all this true ? You and I, — we all know 
it. There is but one religion, natural and revealed 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 359 

by nature, — by outward nature poorly and in hints, 
but by man's inward spirit copiously and at large. 
It is piety in your prayer ; in your practice it is mo- 
rality. But try the nations, society, the Church, per- 
sons, by this sacramental test, and what a spectacle 
we are ! For the religion of the State, study the 
ends and actions of the State ; study the religion of 
the Church by the doctrines and the practice of the 
Church; the religion of society, — read it in the 
great cities of the land. " Thy kingdom come, Thy 
will be done," prays the minister. Listen to the 
" Amen " of the courts and the market, responding 
all the week! The actual religion of mankind is 
always summed up in the most conspicuous men. 
Is that religion Christian ? Spirit of the Crucified ! 
how we take thy honored name in vain ! Yet we 
did not mean to be led astray : the nations did not 
mean it ; the cities meant it not; the churches prayed 
for better things ; the chief men stumbled and fell. 
We have altogether mistaken the ordinance of relig- 
ion, and must mend that. 

The New England Indian insisted upon his poor, 
hungry sacrament ; so did the barbarian German ; 
so the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant; and each 
sectarian has his Shibboleth of ritual and creed. 
How poor and puerile are all these things ! How 
puerile and poor the idea of God asking such trifles 



360 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

of mortal man ! We shall never mend matters till 
we take the real religious sacrament, scorning to 
be deluded longer by- such idle shows. 

Now it has come to such a pass, that men wish to 
limit all religion to their artificial sacraments. The 
natural ordinance of human piety must not be even 
commended in the church. You must not apply re- 
ligion to politics ; it makes men mad. There is no 
law of God above the written laws of men. You 
must not apply it to trade : business is business ; 
religion is religion. Business has the week for his 
time, the world for his market-place; religion has 
her Sunday and her meeting-house ; let each pursue 
his own affairs. So the minister must not expose 
the sins of trade nor the sins of politics. Then, too, 
public opinion must be equally free from the incur- 
sions of piety. " O Religion ! " say men, " be busy 
with thy sacramental creeds, thy sacramental rites, 
thy crumb of bread, thy sip of wine, thy thimbleful 
of water sprinkled on a baby's face, but leave the 
state, the market and all men, to serve the Devil, and 
be lost." " Very well," says the priest, " I accept the 
condition. Come and take our blessed religion ! " 

I began by saying how beautiful is real piety ; so 
let me end. I love to study this in the forms of the 
past, in the mystic forms of Thomas a Kempis and 
William Law, in Fenelon and Swedenborg, in John 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 361 

Tauler, in St. Bernard and St. Victor, in Taylor and 
Herbert. But there it appears not in its fairest form. 
I love to see piety at its work better than in its play 
or its repose ; in philanthropists better than in monks 
and nuns, who gave their lives to contemplation and 
to wordy prayer, and their bodies to be burned. I 
love piety embodied in a Gothic or Roman cathe- 
dral, an artistic prayer in stone, but better in a nation 
well fed, well housed, well clad, instructed well, a 
natural prayer in man or woman. I love the water 
touched by electric fire, and stealing upwards to the 
sky, lovely in the light of the uprising or slowly sink- 
ing sun. I love it not the less descending down as 
dew and rain, to still the dust in all the country 
roads, to cool the pavement in the heated town, to 
wash the city's dirtiest lane, and in the fields giving 
grass to the cattle, and bread to men. What is so 
fair as sentiment, is lovelier as life. 

All the triumphs of ancient piety are for you and 
me ; the lofty sentiment, the high resolve, the vision 
filled with justice, beauty, truth, and love. The 
great, ascending prayer, the manly consciousness of 
God, his income to your soul as justice, beauty, 
truth, and faith and love, — all these wait there for 
you, — happiness now and here; hereafter the cer- 
tain blessedness which cannot pass away. 

Piety is beautiful in all ; to a great man it comes 
as age comes to the Parthenon or the Pyramids, 

31 



362 CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 

making what was vast and high majestic, venerable, 
sublime, and to their beauty giving a solemn awe 
they never knew before. To men not great, to the 
commonest men, it also comes, bringing refinement 
and a loveliness of substance and of shape ; so that 
in a vulgar ecclesiastic crowd they seem like sculp- 
tured gems or beryl and of emerald among the com- 
mon pebbles of the sea. 

Piety is beautiful in all relations of life. When 
your wooing, winsome soul shall wed the won to be 
your other and superior self, a conscious piety hal- 
lows and beautifies the matrimonial vow, — deepens 
and sanctifies connubial love. When a new soul is 
added to your household, — a new rose-bud to your 
bosom, — a bright, particular* star dropped from the 
upper sphere and dazzling in your diadem, — your 
conscious love of God will give the heavenly visit- 
ant the truest, the most prophetic and most blessed 
baptismal welcome here. And when, out of the 
circle that twines you round with loving hearts be- 
loved, some one is taken, born out of your family, 
not into it, a conscious piety will seem to send celes- 
tial baptism to the heaven-born soul. And when 
the mists of age gather about your eye, when the 
silver cord of life is loosed and the golden bowl 
at the fountain begins to break, with what a blessed 
triumph shall you close your mortal sense to this 
romantic moon and this majestic sun, to the stars of 



CONVENTIONAL AND NATURAL SACRAMENTS. 363 



earth that bloom below, the starry flowers that burn 
above, to open your soul on glory which the eye 
has not seen, nor yet the heart of man been compe- 
tent to dream ! 

" Thy sweetness hath betrayed Thee, Lord ! 
Dear Spirit ! it is Thou ; 
Deeper and deeper in my heart 
I feel Thee nestling now ! 

" Dear Comforter ! Eternal Love ! 
Yes, Thou wilt stay with me, 
If manly thoughts and loving ways 
Build but a nest for Thee ! " 



X, 



OF COMMUNION WITH GOD 



THE COMMUNION OF THE HOLT GHOST BE WITH TOU ALL. — 

2 Cor. xiii. 14. 

Simeon the Stylite lived on the top of the pillar 
at Antioch for seven-and-thirty -years, for the sake of 
being nearer to God and holding communion with 
Him. Some men shut themselves up in convents 
and nunneries under vows of perpetual asceticism, 
thinking that God will come into the soul the easier 
if the flesh be worn thin, the body looped and win- 
dowed with bad usage and unnatural hard fare. 
All the monasteries are designed to produce com- 
munion with God. " He dwells," say the priests, 
" not in the broad way and the green, but in the 
stillness of the cloister." All the churches in Chris- 
tendom are built to promote access to Him in vari- 
ous forms. " This is the gate of heaven," says the 
priest, of his church. All the ritual services are for 
this end, — to draw God down to men, or draw men 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



365 



up to God ; or to appease His " wrath." So also 
are the mosques of the Mahometans, the synagogues 
of the Jews, and all the temples of the world. The 
Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon at Athens, St. 
Peter's at Rome, the Mormon temple at Nauvoo, — 
all are but the arms of man artificially lengthened 
and reached out to grasp the Holy Ghost, enfold 
it to the human heart, and commune with it, soul 
to soul. The little hymn which a mother teaches 
her child, cradled on her knee, the solemn litany 
which England pays her thousand priests to chant 
each day in every cathedral of the land, — all are 
for the same end, to promote communion with God. 
For this the Quaker sits silent in his unadorned 
meeting-house waiting for the Spirit, lying low in 
the hand of God to receive His inspiration. For 
this you and I lift up our hearts in silent or un- 
spoken prayer. The petition for this communion is 
common to the enlightened of all mankind. It may 
ascend equally from Catholic or Quaker, from bond 
and free, from Hebrew, Buddhist, Christian, Ma- 
hometan, — from all who have any considerable 
growth of soul. 

I love to look at common life, business and poli- 
tics, from the stand-point of religion, and hence am 
thought to be hard upon the sins of the State and 
the sins of business, trying all things by the higher 
31* 



366 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



law of God. But if religion is good for any thing, 
it is as a rule of conduct for daily life, in the busi- 
ness of the individual and the business of the na- 
tion. It is poor policy and bad business that can- 
not bear to be looked at in the light that lighteneth 
every man, and tried by the divine measure of all 
things. It is a poor clock that will not keep the 
time of the universe. 

I love to look at philosophy — science and meta- 
physics — from the stand-point of religion, and see 
how the conclusions of the intellect square with the 
natural instincts of the heart and soul. Then I love 
to change places, and look at religion and all the 
spontaneous instincts of the soul, with the eye of 
the intellect, from the stand-point of philosophy. 
Hence I am thought to be hard upon the Church ; 
amiable enough toward natural human religion, but 
cruel toward revealed, divine theology. Yet if the 
intellect is good for any thing, it is good to try the 
foundations of religion with. The mind is the eye 
of consciousness. It is a poor doctrine that cannot 
bear to be looked at in the dry light of reason. Let 
us look hard and dry at this notion of communion 
with God, and by reason severely ascertain if there 
be such a thing ; what it is ; how it is to be had ; 
and what comes thereof. 

There must be such a thins: as communion be- 
tween God and man. I mean, defining that provis- 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



367 



ionally, there must be a giving on God's part, and 
a taking on man's part. To state the matter thus is 
to make it evident, — since it follows from the 
nature of God; for from the necessity of his na- 
ture the Infinite Being must create and preserve the 
finite, and to the finite must, in its forms, give and 
communicate of his own kind. It is according to 
the infinite nature of God- to do so; as according to 
the finite nature of light to shine, of fire to burn, of 
water to wet. It follows as well from the nature of 
man as finite and derivative. From the necessity of 
his nature, he must receive existence and the means 
of continuance. He must get all his primitive 
power, which he starts with, and all his materials 
for secondary and automatic growth, from the Primi- 
tive and Infinite Source. The mode of man's finite 
being is of necessity a receiving ; of God's infinite 
being, of necessity a giving. You cannot conceive 
of any finite thing existing without God, the Infi- 
nite basis and ground thereof ; nor of God exist- 
ing without something. God is the necessary logi- 
cal condition of a world, its necessitating cause ; 
a world, the necessary logical condition of God, 
his necessitated consequence. Communion between 
the two is a mutual necessity of nature, on God's 
part and on man's part. I mean it is according 
to the infinite perfection of God's nature to create, 
and so objectify Himself, and then preserve and 



368 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



bless whatever He creates. So by His nature He 
creates, preserves, and gives. And it. is according to 
the finite nature of man to take. So by his nature, 
soon as created, he depends and receives, and is 
preserved only by receiving from the Infinite 
Source. 

That is the conclusion of modern metaphysical 
science. The stream of philosophy runs down from 
Aristotle to Hegel and Hickok, and breaks off' with 
this conclusion ; and I see not how it can be gain- 
said. The statements are apodictic, self-evident at 
every step. 

All that is painfully abstract ; let me make it 
plainer if I can, — at least shoot one shaft more at 
the same mark from the other side. You start with 
yourself, with nothing but yourself. You are con- 
scious of yourself ; not of yourself perhaps as Sub- 
stance, surely as Power to be, to do, to suffer. But 
you are conscious of yourself not as self-originated 
at all, or as self-sustained alone ; only as dependent, 
— first for existence, ever since for support. 

You take the primary ideas of consciousness 
which are inseparable from it, the atoms of self- 
consciousness ; amongst them you find the idea of 
God. Carefully examined by the scrutinizing intel- 
lect, it is the idea of God as Infinite, — perfectly 
powerful, wise, just, loving, holy, — absolute being, 
with no limitation. It is this which made you, 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



369 



made all ; sustains you, sustains all ; made your 
body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts 
extending over millions of years, — for man's body 
is the resultant of all created things ; made your 
spirit, — your mind, your conscience, your affections, 
your soul, your will ; appointed for each its natural 
mode of action ; set each at its several aim. Self- 
consciousness leads you to consciousness of God ; 
at last to consciousness of Infinite God. He is the 
Primitive, whence you are the derivative. You 
must receive, or you could not be a finite man ; and 
He must give, or He could not be the Infinite God. 
Hence the communion is unavoidable, an ontologi- 
cal fact. 

God must be omnipresent in space. There can 
be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no spot on 
an insect's wing, no little cell of life which the mi- 
croscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a moss, 
and brings to light, but God is there, in the mote 
that peoples the sunbeams, in that spot on the in- 
sect's wing, in that cell of life the microscope dis- 
covers in the seed-sporule of a moss. 

God must be also omnipresent in time. There is 
no second of time elapsing now, there has been 
none millions of years ago, before the oldest stars 
began to burn, but God was in that second of 
time. 



370 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



Follow the eye of the great space-penetrating 
telescope at Cambridge into the vast halls of crea- 
tion, to the furthest nebulous spot seen in Orion's 
belt, — a spot whose bigness no natural mind can 
adequately conceive, — and God is there. Follow 
the eye of the great sharply defining microscope at 
Berlin into some corner of creation, to that little 
dot, one of many millions that people an inch of 
stone, once animate with swarming life, a spot too 
small for mortal mind adequately to conceive, — 
and God is there. 

Get you a metaphysic microscope of time to 
divide a second into its billionth part ; God is in 
that. Get you a metaphysic telescope of time, to 
go back in millenniums as the glass in miles, and 
multiply the duration of a solar system by itself to 
get an immensity of time, — still God is there, in 
each elapsing second of that millennial stream of 
centuries; His Here conterminous with the all of 
space, his Now coeval with the all of time. 

Through all this space, in all this time, His 
Being extends, " spreads undivided, operates un- 
spent ; " God in all his infinity, — perfectly power- 
ful, perfectly wdse, perfectly just, perfectly loving 
and holy. His being is an infinite activity, a cre- 
ating, and so a giving of Himself to the world. 
The world's being is a becoming, a being created 
and continued. This is so in the nebula of Orion's 



COMMUXION WITH GOD. 



371 



belt, and in the seed-sporule of the smallest moss. 
It is so now, and was the same millions of millen- 
niums ago. 

All this is philosophy, the unavoidable conclusion 
of the human mind. It is not the opinion of Cole- 
ridge and Kant, but their science ; not what they 
guess, but what they know. 

In virtue of this immanence of God in matter, 
we say the world is a revelation of God ; its exist- 
ence a show of His. Some good books picture to 
us the shows of things, and report in print the whis- 
per of God which men have heard in the material 
world. They say that God is a good optician, — 
for the eye is a telescope and a microscope, the two 
in one ; that He is a good chemist also, ordering all 
things " by measure and number and weight ; " that 
he is a good mechanic, — for the machinery of the 
world, old as it is, is yet " constructed after the 
most approved principles of modern science." All 
that is true, but the finite mechanic is not in his 
work ; he wakes it and then withdraws. God is in 
His work, — 

" As full, as perfect in a hair as heart ; " 
" Acts not by partial, but by general laws." 

All nature works from within; the force that ani>- 
mates it is in every part. It was objected to Sir 
Isaac Newton's philosophy, that it makes the world 



372 



GQMMU-NION WITH GOD. 



all mechanism, which goes without external help, 
and so is a universe without a God ; men thinking 
that He could not work at all in the world-machine, 
unless they saw the Great Hand on the crank 
now and then, or felt the jar of miraculous inter- 
position when some comet swept along the sky. 
The objection was not just, for the manifold action 
of the universe is only the Infinite God's mode of 
operation. Newton merely showed the mode of 
operation, — that it was constant and wonderful,' 
not changing and miraculous ; and so described a 
higher mode of operation than those men could 
fathom, or even reverence. 

These things being so, all material things that are 
must needs be in communion with God ; their crea- 
tion was their first passive act of communion ; their 
existence, a continual act of communion. As God 
is infinite, nothing can be without Him, nothing 
without communion with Him. The stone I sit 
on is in communion with God ; the pencil I write 
with ; the gray field-fly reposing in the sunshine at 
my foot. Let God withdraw from the space oc- 
cupied by the stone, the pencil, and fly, they cease 
to be. Let Him withdraw any quality of his na- 
ture therefrom, and they must cease to be. All 
must partake of Him, immanent in each and yet 
transcending all. 

In this communion, these and all things receive 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



373 



after their kind, according to their degree of being 
and the mode thereof. The mineral, the vegetable, 
and the animal represent three modes of being, three 
degrees of existence ; and hence so many modes 
and degrees of dependence on God and of commu- 
nion with Him. They are, they grow, they move 
and live, in Him, and by means of Him, and only 
so. But none of these are conscious of this com- 
munion. In that threefold form of being there is 
no consciousness of God ; they know nothing of 
their dependence and their communion. The wa- 
ter-fowl, in the long pilgrimage of many a thou- 
sand miles, knows naught of Him who teaches its 
way 

" Along that pathless coast, 
The desert and illimitable air, 

Lone wandering, but not lost." 

To the dog, man stands for God or devil. The 
" half-reasoning elephant " knows nobody and is 
conscious of nothing higher than his keeper, who 
rides upon his neck, pulling his ears with curved 
hook. All these are ignorant of God. 

We come to man. Here he is, a body and a 
spirit. The vegetable is matter, and something 
more ; the animal is vegetable also, and something 
more ; man is animal likewise, and something more. 
So far as I am matter, a vegetable, an animal, — 
and I am each in part, — I have the appropriate 

32 



374 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



communion of the vegetable, the mineral, the ani- 
mal world. My body, this hand, for example, is 
subject to statical, dynamical, and vital laws. God 
is in this hand ; without his infinite existence, its 
finite existence could not be. It is a hand only by 
its unconscious communion with Him. It wills 
nothing ; it knows nothing ; yet all day long, and 
all the night, each monad thereof retains all the 
primary statical and dynamical qualities of matter; 
continually the blood runs through its arteries and 
veins, mysteriously forming this complicated and 
amazing work. Should God withdraw, it were a 
hand no more ; the blood would cease to flow in 
vein and artery ; no monad would retain its primary 
dynamical and static powers ; each atom would 
cease to be. 

All these things, the stone, the pencil, and the fly 
and hand, are but passive and unconscious com- 
municants of God ; they are bare pipes alone into 
which His omnipotence flows. Yes, they are poor, 
brute things, which know Him not, nor cannot 
ever know. The stone and pencil know not them- 
selves ; this marvellous hand knows naught ; and 
the fly never says, reasoning with itself, " Lo, here 
am I, an individual and a conscious thing sucking 
the bosom of the world." It never separates the 
Not-me and the Me. But I am conscious ; I know 
myself, and through myself know God. I am a mind 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



375 



to think, a conscience to perceive the just and right ; 
I am a heart to love, a soul to know of God. 
For communion with my God I have other facul- 
ties than what He gives to stone and pencil, hand 
and fly. 

Put together all these things which are not body, 
and call them Spirit : this spirit as a whole is de- 
pendent on God, for creation first, and for existence 
ever since ; it lives only by communion with Him. 
So far as I am a body, I obviously depend on God, 
and am no more self-created and self-sufficing than 
the pencil or the fly. So far as I am a spirit, I 
depend equally on Him. Should God withdraw 
Himself or any of His qualities from my mind, I 
could not think ; from conscience, I should know 
nothing of the right ; from the heart, there could be 
no love ; from the soul, then there could be no holi- 
ness, no faith in Him that made it. Thus the very 
existence of the spirit is a dependence on God, and 
so far a communion with Him. 

I cannot wholly separate my spirit from this com- 
munion ; for that would be destruction of the spirit, 
annihilation, which is in no man's power. Only 
the Infinite can create or annihilate an atom of mat- 
ter or a monad of spirit. There is a certain amount 
of communion of the spirit with God, which is not 
conscious ; that lies quite beyond my control. I 
" break into the bloody house of life," and my 



376 



COMMUXION WITH GOD. 



spirit rushes out of the body, and while the static 
and dynamic laws of nature reassume their sway 
over my material husk, rechanging it to dust, still 
I am, I depend, and so involuntarily commune 
with God. Even the popular theology admits this 
truth, for it teaches that the living wicked still com- 
mune with God through pain and wandering and 
many a loss ; and that the wicked dead commune 
with Him through hell against their will, as with 
then* w T ill the heavenly saints through heavenly joy. 

I cannot end this communion with my God ; but 
I can increase it, greaten it largely, if I will. The 
more I live my higher normal life, the more do I 
commune w r ith God. If I live only as mere body, 
I have only corporeal and unconscious communion, 
as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal, no more. As 
children, we all begin as low as this. The child 
unborn or newly born has no self-consciousness, 
know r s nothing of its dependence, its spontaneous 
communion with its God, whereon by laws it de- 
pends for being and continuance. As we outgrow 
our babyhood we are conscious of ourselves, distin- 
guish the Me and the Not-me, and learn at length 
of God. 

I live as spirit, I have spiritual communion with 
God. Depend on Him I must ; when I become self- 
conscious, I feel that dependence, and know of this 
communion, whereby I receive from Him. 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



377 



The quantity of my receipt is largely under my 
control. As I will, I can have less or more. I cul- 
tivate my mind, greatening its quantity ; by all its 
growth I have so much more communion with my 
Father; each truth I get is a point common to 
Him and me. I cultivate my conscience, increas- 
ing my moral sense ; each atom of justice that I 
get is another point common with the Deity. So 
I cultivate and enlarge my affections ; each grain 
of love — philanthropic or but friendly — is a new 
point common to me and God. Then, too, I cul- 
tivate and magnify my soul, greatening my sense 
of holiness, by fidelity to all my nature ; and all that 
I thus acquire is a new point I hold in common 
with the Infinite. I earnestly desire His truth, His 
justice, His holiness and love, and He communi- 
cates the more. Thus I have a fourfold voluntary 
consciousness of God through my mind and con- 
science, heart and soul ; know Him as the abso- 
lutely true and just and amiable and holy ; and 
thereby have a fourfold voluntary communion with 
my God. He gives of his infinite kind ; I receive 
in my finite mode, taking according to my capacity 
to receive. 

I may diminish the quantity of this voluntary 
communion. For it is as possible to stint the spirit 
of its God, as to starve the body of its food ; only 
not to the final degree, — to destruction of the spirit. 
32* 



378 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



This fact is well known. You would not say that 
Judas had so much and so complete communion 
w T ith God as Jesus had. And if Jesus had yielded 
to the temptation in the story, all would declare that 
for the time he must diminish the income of God 
upon his soul. For unfaithfulness in any part les- 
sens the quantity and mars the quality of our com- 
munion with the Infinite. 

In most various ways men may enlarge the 
power to communicate with God : complete and 
normal life is the universal instrument thereof. 
Here is a geologist chipping the stones, or study- 
ing the earthquake-waves ; here a metaphysian chip- 
ping the human mind, studying its curious laws, — 
psychology, logic, ontology ; here is a merchant, a 
mechanic, a poet, each diligently using his intellec- 
tual gift ; and as they acquire the power to think, 
by so much more do they hold intellectual commu- 
nion with the thought of God, their finite mind 
communing with the Infinite. My active power of 
understanding, imagination, reason, is the measure 
vof my intellectual communion with Him. 

A man strives to know the everlasting right, to 
.keep a conscience void of all offence ; his inward 
•eye is pure and single ; all is true to the Eternal 
Right. His moral powers continually expand, and 
by so much more does he hold communion with his 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



379 



God. As far as it can see, his finite conscience 
reads in the book the Eternal Right of God. A 
man's power of conscience is the measure of his 
moral communion with the Infinite. 

I repress my animal self-love, I learn to be well- 
tempered, disinterested, benevolent, friendly to a 
few, and philanthropic unto all : my heart is ten 
times greater than ten years ago. To him that 
hath shall be given according to the quantity and 
quality of what he has, and I communicate with 
God so much the more. The greatness of my heart 
is the measure of my affectional communion with 
Him. 

I cultivate the religious faculty within me, keep- 
ing my soul as active as my sense ; I quicken my 
consciousness of the dear God ; I learn to rever- 
ence and trust and love, seeking to keep his every 
rule of conduct for my sense' and soul; I make my 
soul some ten times larger than it was, and just 
as I enhance its quantity and quality, so much the 
more do I religiously commune with God. The 
power of my religious sense is the measure of my 
communion with my Father. I feed on this, and 
all the more I take, the more I grow, and still the 
more I need. 

In all this there is nothing miraculous, nothing 
mysterious, nothing strange. From his mothers 
breast it is the lamest child that takes the most. 



380 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



At first a man's spiritual communion is very little, 
is most exceeding small ; but in normal life it be- 
comes more and more continually. Some of you, 
grown men, can doubtless remember your religious 
experience when you were children. A very little 
manna was food enough for your baby-soul. But 
your character grew more and more, your intellec- 
tual, moral, and religious life continually became 
greater and greater ; when you needed much, you 
had no lack, when little, there seemed nothing over ; 
demand and supply are still commensurate. Noth- 
ing is more under our control than the amount of 
this voluntary communion with God. 

" Misfortunes, do the best we can, 
Will come to great and small." 

We cannot help that, but we can progressively 
enlarge the amount of inspiration we receive from 
Heaven, spite of the disappointments and sorrows of 
life ; nay, by means thereof. 

" Thy home is with the humble, Lord ! 
The simple are Thy rest ; 
Thy lodging is in childlike hearts, 
Thou makest there Thy nest." 

Sometimes a man makes a conscious and serious 
effort to receive and enlarge this communion. He 
looks over his daily life ; his eye runs back to child- 
hood, and takes in all the main facts of his outward 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



381 



and inward history. He sees much to mend, some- 
thing also to approve. Here he erred through pas- 
sion, there sinned by ambition ; the desire from 
within, leagued with opportunity from without, 
making temptation too strong for him. He is pen- 
itent for the sin that was voluntary, or for the heed- 
lessness whereby he went astray, — sorrowful at his 
defeat. But he remembers the manly part of him, 
and with new resolutions braces himself for new 
trials. He thinks of the powers that lie unused in 
his own nature. He looks out at the examples of 
lofty men, his soul is stirred to its deeper depths. 
A new image of beauty rises, living from that troub- 
led sea, and the Ideal of human loveliness is folded 
in his arms. " This fair Ideal," says he, " shall be 
mine. I also will be as whole and beautiful. Ah, 
me ! how can I ever get such lovely life ? " Then 
he thinks of the Eternal Wisdom, the Eternal Jus- 
tice, the Eternal Love, the Eternal Holiness, which 
surrounds him, and now fills up his consciousness, 
waiting to bless. He reaches out his arms towards 
that Infinite Motherliness which created him at first 
and preserved him ever since ; which surpassed 
when he fell short, furnishing the great plan of his 
life and the world's life, and is of all things perfect 
Cause and Providence. Then, deeply roused in 
every part, he communicates with the Infinite Mind 
and Conscience, Heart and Soul. He is made 



382 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



calmer by the thought of the immense tranquillity 
which enfolds the nervous world in its all-embrac- 
ing, silent arms. He is comforted by the motherly 
aspect of that Infinite Eye, which never slumbers 
in its watch over the suffering of each great and 
every little thing, converting it all to good. He is 
elevated to confidence in himself, when he feels so 
strong in the never-ending love which makes, sus- 
tains, and guides the world of matter, beasts, and 
men ; makes from perfect motives, sustains with 
perfect providence, and guides by perfect love to 
never-ending bliss. Yea, the tranquillity, pity, love, 
of the Infinite Mother enters into his soul, and he 
is tranquil, soothed, and strong, once more. He has 
held communion with his God, and the Divine has 
given of the Deity's own kind. His artistic fancy 
and his plastic hand have found an Apollo in that 
pliant human block. 

That is a prayer. I paint the process out in 
words, — they are not my prayer itself, only the 
cradle of my blessed heavenly babe. I paint it not 
in words, — it is still my prayer, not less the aspira- 
tion of my upward-flying soul. I carry my child 
cradled only in my arms. 

I have this experience in my common and daily 
life, with no unusual grief to stir, or joy to quicken, 
or penitence to sting me into deep emotion : then 
my prayer is only a border round my daily life, to 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



383 



keep the web from ravelling away through constant 
use and wear ; or else a fringe of heaven, where- 
by I beautify my common consciousness and daily 
work. 

But there strikes for me a greater hour ; some 
new joy binds me to this, or puts another genera- 
tion into my arms ; another heart sheds its life into 
my own ; some great sorrow sends me in upon 
myself and God ; out of the flower of self-indul- 
gence the bee of remorse stings me into agony. 
And then I rise from out my common conscious- 
ness, and take a higher, wider flight into the vast 
paradise of God, and come back laden from the 
new and honeyed fields wherein I have a newer 
and a fresher life and sweeter communings with 
loftier loveliness than I had known before. Thus 
does the man, that will, hold commune with his 
Father, face to face, and get great income from the 
Soul of all. 

In all this there is nothing miraculous ; there has 
been no change on God's part, but a great change 
on man's. We have received what He is univer- 
sally giving. So in winter it is clear and cold, the 
winds are silent, clouds gather over the city's face, 
and all is still. How cold it is ! In a few hours the 
warmth steals out from the central fire, — the earth's 
domestic, household hearth ; the clouds confine it 
in, those airy walls, that it flee not off, nor spread to 



384 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



boundless space ; the frost becomes the less intense, 
and men are gladdened with the milder day. So, 
when magnetic bars in time have lost their force, 
men hang them up in the line of the meridian, and 
the great loadstone, the earth, from her own breast, 
restores their faded magnetism. Thus is it that 
human souls communicate with the great central 
Fire and Light of all the world, the loadstone of 
the universe, and thus recruit, grow young again, 
and so are blessed and strong. 

There may be a daily, conscious communion 
w'ith God, marked by reverence, gratitude, aspira- 
tion, trust, and love ; it w T ill not be the highest 
prayer. 

" 'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep 
Heights that the soul is competent to gain." 

And the highest prayer is no common event In a 
man's life. Ecstasy, rapture, great delight in prayer, 
or great increase thereby, — they are the rarest 
things in the life of any man. They should be 
rare. The tree blossoms but once a year ; blooms 
for a week, and then fulfils and matures its fruit in 
the long months of summer and of harvest-time, — 
fruit for a season, and seed for many an age. The 
sun is but a moment at meridian. Jesus had his 
temptation but once, but once his agony, — the two 
foci round which his life's beauteous ellipse was 
drawn. The intensest consciousness of friendship 



COMMUXIOX WITH GOD. 



385 



does not last long. They say men have but once 
the ecstasy of love ; human nature could not bear 
such a continual strain. So all the blossomings 
of rapture must needs be short. The youthful 
ecstasy of love leads man and maid by moonlight 
up the steep, sheer cliffs of life, " while all below, 
the world in mist lies lost ; " then, in the daylight 
of marriage they walk serenely on, along the high 
table-land of mortal life, and though continually 
greatening their connubial love and joy, it is with- 
out the early ecstasy. 

Men sometimes seek to have their daily prayer 
hi^h and ecstatic as their highest hour and walk 
with God ; it cannot be ; it should not be. Some 
shut themselves up in convents to make religion 
their business, — all their life ; to make an act of 
prayer their only act. They always fail ; their relig- 
ion dwindles into ritual service, and no more ; their 
act of prayer is only kneeling with the knees and 
talking talk with windy tongues. A Methodist, in 
great ecstasy of penitence or fear, becomes a mem- 
ber of a church. He all at once is filled with raptur- 
ous delight ; religious joy blossoms in his face, and 
glitters in his eye. How glad is the converted man L 

" Then when he kneels to meditate, 
Sweet thoughts come o'er his soul, 
Countless, and bright, and beautiful, 
Beyond his own control." 

33 



386 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



But by and by his rapture dies away, and he is 
astonished that he has no such ecstasy as before. 
He thinks that he has "fallen from grace," has 
" grieved away " the Holy Ghost, and tries by 
artificial excitement to bring back what will not 
come without a new occasion. Certain religious 
convictions once made my heart spring in my 
bosom. Now it is not so. The fresh leaping of 
the heart will only come from a fresh conquest of 
new truth. The old man loves his wife a thou- 
sand times better than when, for the first time, he 
kissed her gracious mouth ; but his heart burns no 
longer as when he first saw his paradise in her 
reciprocating eye. The tree of religious conscious- 
ness is not in perpetual blossom, — but now in leaf, 
now flower, now fruit. 

It is a common error to take no heed of this vol- 
untary communion with God, to live intent on busi- 
ness or on pleasure, careful, troubled about many 
things, and seldom heed the one thing needed most ; 
to take that as it comes. If all this mortal life 
turned out just as we wished it, this error would 
be still more common ; only a few faculties would 
get their appropriate discipline. Men walking only 
on a smooth and level road use the same muscles 
always, and march like mere machines. But disap- 
pointment comes on us. Sorrow checks our course, 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



387 



and we are forced to think and feel, — must march 
now up hill, and then down, shifting the strain from 
part to part. In mere prosperity most men are con- 
tented to enlarge their estate, their social rank, their 
daily joy, and lift their children's faces to the vulgar 
level of the vulgar flood whereon their fathers float. 
There comes some new adventure to change and 
mend all this. Now it is a great joy, success not 
looked for, — some kindred soul is made one with 
us, and on the pinions of instinctive connubial love 
we fly upwards and enlarge our intercourse with 
God, — the object of passion a communion angel 
to lead the human soul to a higher seat in the uni- 
verse and a more intimate acquaintance with the 
Soul of all. Sometimes the birth of a new immor- 
tal into our arms does this, and on the pinions of 
instinctive affection men soar up to heaven and 
bring back healing on their wings, — the object of 
affection the communion angel to convey and wel- 
come them to heaven. 

Sometimes it is none of these, but sorrow, grief, 
and disappointment that do this. I set my heart 
upon a special thing ; — it is not mine, or if I get 
the honor, the money, the social rank I sought, it 
was one thing in my eye and another in my grasp. 
The one bird which I saw in the bush was worth 
ten like that I hold in my hand. The things I 
loved are gone, — the maid, the lover, husband, 



388 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



wife, or child ; the mortal is taken from longing 
arms. The heart looks up for what can never die. 
Then there is a marriage and a birth, not into your 
arms, but out of them and into heaven ; and the sor- 
row and the loss stir you to woo and win that Ob- 
ject of the soul which cannot pass away. Your 
sorrow takes you on her wings, and you go up 
higher than before ; higher than your success, higher 
than friendship's daily wing ascends ; higher than 
your early love for married mate had ever borne you 
up ; higher than the delight in your first-born child 
or latest born. You have a new communion with 
your Father, and get a great amount of inspiration 
from Him. 

This is the obvious use of such vicissitudes, and 
seems a portion of their final cause. In the artifi- 
cial, ecclesiastical life of monasteries, men aim to 
reproduce this part of nature's discipline, and so 
have times of watching, fasting, bodily torture. But 
in common life such discipline asks not our consent 
to come. 

As I look over your faces and recall the personal 
history of those I know, I see how universal is this 
disappointment. But it has not made you more 
melancholy and less manly men ; life is not thereby 
the less a blessing, and the more a load. With no 
sorrows you would be more sorrowful. For all the 
sorrows that man has faithfully contended with, he 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



389 



shall sail into port deeper fraught with manliness. 
The wife and mother at thirty years of age im- 
prisoned in her chair, her hands all impotent to 
wipe a tear away, does not suffer for nothing. She 
has thereby been taught to taste the fruits of sweeter 
communion with her God. These disappointments 
are rounds in the ladder whereby we climb to 
heaven. 

In cities there is less to help us communicate 
with God than in the fields. These walls of brick 
and stone, this artificial ground we stand on, all re- 
mind us of man ; even the city horse is a machine. 
But in the country it is God's ground beneath our 
feet ; God's hills on every side ; his heaven, broad, 
blue, and boundless, overhead ; and every bush and 
every tree, the morning song of earliest birds, the 
chirp of insects at mid-day, the solemn stillness of 
the night, and the mysterious hosts of stars that all 
night long climb up the sky, or silently go down, 
— these continually affect the soul, and cause us all 
to feel the Infinite Presence, and draw near to that ; 
and earth seems less to rest in space than in the 
love of God. So, in cities, men build a great 
church, — at London, Paris, Venice, or at Rome, — 
seeking to compensate for lack of the natural ad- 
monitions of the woods and sky ; and, to replace 
the music of the fields and nature's art, enlist the 
33* 



390 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 

painter's plastic hand and the musician's sweetest 
skill. 

All that seek religion are in search for commu- 
nion with God. What is there between Him and 
thee ? Nothing but thyself. Each can have what 
inspiration each will take. God is continually giv- 
ing ; He will not withhold from you or me. As 
much ability as He has given, as much as you have 
enlarged your talent by manly use, so much will He 
fill with inspiration. I hold up my little cup. He 
fills it full. If yours is greater, rejoice in that, and 
bring it faithfully to the same urn. He who fills 
the violet with beauty, and the sun with light, — 
who gave to Homer his gift of song, such reason 
to Aristotle, and to Jesus the manly gifts of justice 
and the womanly grace of love and faith in Him, — 
will not fail to inspire also you and me. Were your 
little cup to become as large as the Pacific sea, He 
still would fill it full. 

There is such a thing as having a godly heart, a 
desire to conform to the ideal of man in all things, 
and to be true to Him that is " of all Creator and 
Defence." He who has that is sure of conscious 
spiritual communion with the Father ; sure to find 
his character enlarging in every manly part ; sure 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



391 



to be supplied with unexpected growth, and to hold 
more of the Divine ; sure of the voluntary inspiration 
which is proper to the self-conscious man. 

There are continual means of help even for men 
who dwell hedged up in towns. There are always 
living voices which can speak to us. A good book 
helps one ; this feeds his soul for a time on the fair 
words of David, Paul, or John, Taylor, A Kempis, 
Wordsworth, Emerson ; that, on the life of him who 
gives a name to Christendom. He who has more 
than I, will help me ; him that has less, I shall help. 
Some men love certain solemn forms, as aids to 
their devotion ; I hope that they are helped thereby, 
— that baptism helps the sprinkler or the wet ; that 
circumcision aids the Jew, and sacrifice the heathen 
who offers it. But these are not the communion, 
only at most its vehicle. Communion is the meet- 
ing of the finite and the Infinite. 

If a man have a truly pious soul, then his whole 
inward, outward life will at length become religion ; 
for the disposition to be true to God's law will 
appear the same in his business as in his Sunday 
vow. His whole work will be an act of faith, he 
will grow greater, better, and more refined by com- 
mon life, and hold higher communion with the Ever- 
Present ; the Sun of righteousness will beautify his 
every day. 

God is partial to no one, foreign to none. Did he 



392 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



inspire the vast soul of Moses, — the tender hearts 
of lowly saints in every clime and every age ? He 
waits to come down on you and me, a continual 
Pentecost of inspiration. Here in the crowded vul- 
gar town, everywhere, is a Patmos, a Sinai, a Geth- 
semane ; the Infinite Mother spreads wide her arms 
to fold us to that universal breast, ready to inspire 
your soul. God's world of truth is ready for your 
intellect ; His ocean of justice waits to flow in upon 
your conscience ; and all His heaven of love broods 
continually by night and day over each heart and 
every soul. From that dear bounty shall w T e be fed. 
The Motherly Love invites all, — as much commu- 
nion as we will, as much inspiration as our gifts and 
faithfulness enable us to take. He is not far from 
any one of us. Shall we not all go home, — the 
prodigal rejoice with him that never went astray? 
Even the consciousness of sin brings some into 
nearness with the Father, tired of their draff and 
husks ; and then it is a blessed sin. Sorrow also 
brings some, and then it is a blessed grief ; joy 
yet others, and then it is blessed thrice. In 
this place is one greater than the temple, greater 
than all temples ; for the human nature of the low- 
liest child transcends all human history. And we 
may live so that all our daily life shall be a con- 
tinual approach and mounting up towards God. 
What is the noblest life ? Not that born in the 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 



393 



most famous place, acquiring wealth and fame and 
rank and power over matter and over men ; but that 
which, faithful to itself continually, holds commu- 
nion with the Infinite, and, thence receiving of God's 
kind, in mortal life displays the truth, the justice, 
holiness, and love of God. 

" O, blessed be our trials then, 
This deep in which we lie ; 
And blessed be all things that teach 
God's dear Infinity." 



END. 



The following works of Mr. Parker may be had of Messrs. 
Little, Brown cV Co.: — 



A Discourse of Matters pertaixixg to Religiox. 3d Ed. 
1847. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25. 

Ax IXTRODUCTIOX TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, FROM THE GER- 

man of De WeTte. 2d Ed. 1850. 2 vols. 8vo. S3. 75. 

Critical axd Miscellaxeous Writixgs. 1843. 1 vol. 12mo. 
81.25. 

Addresses axd Occasional Sermoxs. 1852. 2 vols. 12mo. 
82.50. 

Tex Sermoxs of Religiox. 1852. 1 vol. 12mo. Si. 

Sermons of Theism, Atheism, axd the Popular The- 
ology. 1853. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25. 

Additioxal Speeches, Addresses, axd Occasioxal Ser- 
moxs. 1855. 2 vols. 12mo. 82.50. 



Pamphlets. — Sermons on the following Subjects : — 
Of Old Age. 1854. 15 cents. 

Of the New Crime agaixst Humanity. 1854. 20 cents. 

Of the Laws of God axd the Statutes of Men. 1854. 
15 cents. 

Of the Dangers which threatex the Rights of Max 
lx America. 1854. 20 cents. 

Of the Moral Dangers ixcidext to Prosperity. 1855. 
15 cents. 

Of the Coxsequexces of ax Immoral Principle. 1855. 
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